Flicker: Spell It Out
by Phenax
Summary: Sequel to You and Me. They knew the threat in New Orleans was imminent, but how could they have known what really awaited them? Darcy, more desperate than ever to protect her kids, will stop at nothing to ensure no one harms a hair on their innocent heads. KolxOC
1. 00: Surviving Eternity

"Take me down to the river bend.  
Take me down to the fighting end.  
Wash the poison from off my skin.  
Show me how to be whole again."

 _Castle of Glass_ : Linkin Park

* * *

Thanksgiving was almost here, and it was a miracle we had made it this long.

There was no sign of unrest, no signs that anyone was currently plotting against us or our children. If that wasn't enough to be thankful for, life was _good_. With their first birthday approaching much too quickly, things were a new type of normal around the Mikaelson place.

Boxed up in one of the many random rooms that Klaus had added onto the house without much intent to actually use were decorations that I had already bought, Mickey Mouse decorations to be exact. It was Theia and Alastor's _favorite_ show, and any time it was on, it was as if it was a magic entrancement spell because they scarcely ever looked away as long as Mickey was currently playing. They would squeal or clap their hands any time they heard the Hot Dog Song, or sometimes even dance as best they could.

Have you ever seen two eleven month old babies dance? I have, and it is the most adorable thing you will ever see. They bob their heads, grab onto the couch and use their new leg power to shake their little butts . . . seriously, it was so adorable. I was glad we had managed to capture some of it on video.

There were boxes of decorations, as the party was going to be one to remember, but there were still some things missing, like background music. They had plenty of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CDs, but I didn't want a million different songs. I wanted some things that pretty much revolved around the theme song and the Hot Dog Song.

I was so lost, scrolling through the different things on Amazon, that I didn't notice someone coming into the room, not until his arms were suddenly rubbing down mine, until his lips were moving their way down my neck.

My body immediately came to life, pressing back into the couch so I might get closer to him. He liked the response, and he only began to nibble the skin in response.

"The twins are both asleep."

I took a deep breath and let my eyes flutter shut, let myself get lost in the moment of Kol's lips moving along my skin like it was the most delicious thing he had ever tasted. Sometimes, he acted like it really was.

"I'll be done in just a second."

He sighed and was suddenly on the other side of the couch, falling down next to me so he could get a better view of what it was I was actually doing. One arm draped over my shoulder, and I watched the features of his face contort, watched the irritation take center stage beyond all the rest.

"Whatever you do, the damn Hot Dog Song better not be playing the entire time," he grumbled.

It was no secret that the song thoroughly annoyed Kol—it annoyed most of us at this point—but I laughed in response anyway. "It's _their_ party. Not yours."

That wasn't the response he was hoping for, but he didn't press the issue further. There was something more important on his mind, something he would much rather press forward, so he leaned over towards me, burying his face into my neck so he could continue where he left off.

Seriously, this just wasn't even fair. The insatiability that came from being a newly turned Original hybrid—then tribrid—was supposed to subside. It was supposed to be _easier_ , but it wasn't. Nine months later, and I still couldn't get enough of him.

Would I ever be able to get enough? Would eternity really be enough?

In theory, it should've been, but sometimes, it was hard to see. The cutesy phase of relationships, the part where the couple couldn't get enough of one another, was supposed to be long passed, yet it wasn't for us. Every little thing he did had the power to set off an explosion of desire, light my body up in ways that just wasn't healthy.

With his lips hungrily devouring my skin, with his teeth biting just enough to make it more than just gentle, it was hard to focus on what I was trying to do. I attempted to move him away, but he just came back stronger, reminding me that all of this insatiability was a two-sided thing. Kol craved me as desperately as I craved him.

I didn't let myself cave yet, but I found myself looking around, to ensure no one was gonna walk in and find us this way. Kol had stopped caring about the other people in the house, or maybe he had never cared. After all, I had been the one to make the "no PDA" rule to begin with. He just went along with it to make me happy.

Then there were moments like this when he just didn't care.

I was just thankful that there were less people in the house than there used to be. It used to be so overcrowded that there was no way to get away with this in the middle of the living room. It sort of started after we graduated high school, when everything really changed.

All of my life plans were completely shattered, but they had to be to have the life I never could've dreamed. It was better than anything I might've hoped for. While all of the people I had grown up with were slaving away in college, I was enjoying my life as a mother, as a tribrid.

The only way that I could remember that life wasn't a fairytale was the nightmares I had, still to this day. They weren't constant, but I didn't forget. I couldn't forget. I had killed hundreds, maybe thousands, and that's not something someone can just do and move on from, not without a thousand years of experience under their belts.

Sometimes, I thought the grief would consume me. It was so powerful sometimes that I struggled to get out of bed, but all Kol had to do was go get the twins, to bring them in there with me and remind me why I had done the horrible thing that I had done. It was moments like this, their first birthday party that would be _normal_ , that made me do what I had done. They deserved to have as much chance at life as any other child, and I would continue ensuring they did.

Thanksgiving was going to do me a lot of good, though. I needed to see my sisters, and after having them in their lives daily for so long, the twins needed to see the rest of their family. It had been a while since they saw any of the people I had called family before the Mikaelsons came to town. Alaric got a job as the Occult Studies professor up at Whitmore. Damon and Jeremy had a place in McKinley, closer to Whitmore, so the only people they saw from before the Mikaelsons came to town were Stefan and Matt.

After his and Rebekah's summer romance had faded away, he didn't come around so often. Things weren't exactly tense, as they had both agreed that it would never work between them and stopped things mutually, but they were still attracted to one another. I wasn't entirely convinced they weren't still secretly fucking, as strictly friends, but Rebekah was insistent.

I was especially looking forward to seeing Caroline, even if she came back to town more often than any of the others. She tried to focus on school, but there were lonely weekends, when the couples she was surrounded with had dates and whatnot planned, she came back to Mystic Falls, unable to escape the loneliness.

She would go downstairs and try and communicate with him. Originally, she would just sit down there and talk to him, but Elijah showed her how easy it was to communicate with an Original who was daggered. Their minds were easier to get into, even for a young vampire.

From what I had gathered, she was keeping him updated with her life, talking to him about anything she could think of. There was one conversation she had told me about that had gone exactly how I might expect Caroline to converse. She told him that she couldn't wait for him to wake up, but she was insistent that they weren't going to do anything too hasty. It would all be taken slowly and casually.

I didn't imagine Klaus believed that at all. I certainly didn't. She was anxious, unsure how to handle all of this, but she was embracing the deep rooted feelings that had come from what felt like nowhere. Everything that we had gone through, Caroline and Klaus had been around one another. She had seen the man come out from inside, and she had fallen for him without realizing it. No matter what, she was going to embrace that feeling.

Maybe I should take a page from her book.

Closing the computer, I barely took time to set it on the coffee table in front of me. My lips grabbed onto Kol's, and I used my hands to pin his by his side, to give me leverage to roll myself over on top of him. He came to life beneath me, moving himself closer against me on instinct. Our lips moved with experience, but experience didn't make it any less incredible than it always was. Desire pulsing through me, intimacy and passion igniting me, I could never get enough of this feeling.

Just when his hands moved to the waistline of my shorts, I pulled myself off of him. Getting on my feet was easy enough, but staying there was a bit harder. He didn't like being cut off like that, even for just a moment. Sometimes, he could act like a spoiled child about it all, but his desire to have me was almost never annoying, no matter how spoiled he acted.

He wasn't able to pull me down so easily, not with me awakening the werewolf inside of me, so he gave up the fight. I guess he probably figured that he'd get what he wanted faster if he gave it up because he suddenly stood to his feet, leaning down to grab onto my lips with his own.

I got lost in the feeling of his hand moving to grab onto my face, with him kissing me as if we were running out of time. We literally had forever, but I wasn't alone in the feeling that forever wasn't nearly enough time.

"Since you won't let me have you here, please come upstairs with me, love."

I smiled widely and let my arms fall from around his neck. "I would love to."

His hands went to his side, but one grabbed onto mine on the way. It wasn't that I didn't know where our bedroom was, but he liked taking me there himself sometimes. Or maybe he just liked embracing me in the way that was still fairly new to him, considering he had gone a thousand years without intimate touches like that one.

We barely made it out of the living room and back into the grand entrance hall before someone began knocking on the front door.

Back before all of the supernatural stuff started in our lives, a knock on the door at this hour would've scared the hell out of me, but this was different. It was a different kind of fear as well.

I didn't fear for _my_ life anymore, like I might have then. This was fear for the two children upstairs, but it was brief, just a flash.

Of course someone was knocking. We had a lot of family in town, family that might have just made it back. From the brunette silhouette standing outside, I was comforted. Elena would've knocked.

Thanks to the barrier spell I put around the threshold of the door, ensuring that no one could get in without being invited, she had to knock. I had meant for it to be just like the thing that kept vampires out of the homes of living without being invited it, but it was more. I had to invite people inside every single time. I was the only one who could pass through. Even the twins couldn't get through, and inviting everyone in over and over again was getting annoying.

It was probably due to my out of control magic, but I was gonna get to the bottom of it and fix it. I was sick of inviting people in when it was their home, but I didn't know how to fix it without somehow making it worse.

The closer I got, the more I realized that the person standing outside wasn't Elena. Elena was taller, eye-level with me, but this person was shorter than we were. This was someone else.

I could've thought it through, could've tried to guess at who was on the other side, but that was senseless. I just had to open the door and find out for myself.

I didn't know if I would've come up with the name of the person on the other side, the young vampire I had created without thinking much about it at all.

"Davina?" I could scarcely get the word out, as my breath hitched in my chest. Kol was pulling me away from the door almost the instant he saw her, but one glare sent back his way stopped him. "I can more than handle myself, Kol. She can't get inside anyways."

His eyes tightened, focused on Davina. "What are you doing here?"

There was darkness in her eyes when she looked between the two of us, but one deep breath was all it took to get some of that darkness to subside. "Look, I don't wanna be here. I'd rather be anywhere else, but I've spent weeks trying to find you. Without magic, it's . . . difficult. Can I come inside?"

"Come on in." My curiosity was getting the better of me, even if it might've been considered dangerous to invite her inside. Technically, there wasn't really anything she could do. She was a young vampire in a house full of Originals and, you know, me. She wouldn't make it to the first step.

What did she need? Why was she looking for us?

Davina stuck her foot out first, to test if she was able to get through, and there was obvious surprise splashed across the features of her face when she could. She didn't question it, however, and instead stepped further inside.

I understood the marvel as she looked around her, as she took in the elegant interior of the Mikaelson mansion. The exterior was elaborate, but it didn't quite prepare you for the inside of it all.

Klaus had gone to great lengths to make the home spectacular, and I had almost gotten used to it myself. Still, some days, I couldn't help but wonder if this was the eternity ahead of me, ahead of the twins.

This would be all I knew, and that . . . was the princess life that most only secretly dreamed of.

Fuck, Kol was right. I had become hopelessly spoiled.

It had been a while since I had had a dream about Davina, about what I had done to her. It was easier to face, with the circumstances of it all. She was young, not even eighteen, and I had forced her into a life of vampirism. I had stripped her of her magic and made her into something she probably didn't want to be. Considering the vampires surrounding her, why would I believe that she did?

"Is something wrong?"

"Yes." Davina looked at me now, and the wonder faded, twisted into anger and darkness that only a fiery young spirit like hers might show. "You were in New Orleans for all of a day, and you somehow managed to destroy everything."

"Alright, but to be fair, we weren't going to do anything but make the gold dagger," I reminded her. "You and Marcel forced our hand."

Something about hearing his name took away all the fire, all the fight she had inside of her, and she had to look away, towards her feet. "That's why I'm here. I need your help."

Kol scoffed, and he folded his arms over his chest. "Our help? We're not errand boys."

I held a hand over towards him, to silence his protests. "What's going on, Davina?"

He had to know why I was doing this. It was obvious to everyone that killing the Gemini had gotten to me, no matter the reasoning behind it. Rebekah promised that it would pass, but she couldn't say that because she didn't know. None of the Mikaelsons had ever murdered hundreds, maybe thousands, in one single moment. Their kills had been singular, maybe small groups, but Kol was the only one who had come close, admitting that he once killed over sixty people at a time.

It still didn't even compare, but I imagined she was right, that I would eventually come to terms with it and move on.

No one knew that there was also guilt at what I had done to Davina, no one but Kol. If there was any way to ease my guilt, maybe helping her would do just that. I didn't know what she needed, if we even _could_ help, but if it was a chance to find peace in what I had done to her, I had to take it.

Kol let out a drawn out sigh and rubbed his lips together. "Alright. What do you need?"

The commotion downstairs got the attention of everyone, or at least Rebekah and Elijah. Sutton and Shea were enjoying the privacy spell I put up for them after Sutton had proposed, enjoying one another to the fullest, so I really hoped they didn't decide to come in here. They needed their time, too.

Elijah's eyes were on Davina, and there was emptiness that I had forgotten all about. When Elijah first came to town, he was cryptic, empty, and the biggest mystery. He came at a time when we were first learning about Klaus, and for the first portion of it all, I wasn't allowed near either of them. I was forced to wear a brown contact, to temporarily dye my hair to ensure Elijah never realized I wasn't Elena.

Dyeing my hair only made it obvious because my skin was too pale. He noticed in a moment, but as he had no reason to tell his brother that there were potentially two doppelgängers—he was using one to break the curse so he could kill Klaus, and one was all he needed—so he had given me his word he wouldn't tell. That was the first time I saw any flicker of emotion inside of Elijah, when he gave me his word he wouldn't tell his brother of my existence, stating that I was a breath of fresh air compared to the other doppelgängers. The small differences in me and them made me a relief to him, so much that he didn't want to see his brother kill me or hurt me in any way.

Now . . . it was fun to imagine that he had always sensed there was something important about me, though I doubted that was actually true.

His eyes were empty when they fell to Davina, however, as he made his way to stand near his brother. "I cannot say I expected to see you again."

"It's Marcel." Davina's eyes watered, moving up to stare right at Elijah and Rebekah. "The witches have him, and they're not going to give him to anyone but the Mikaelsons."

"Marcel?" Rebekah asked, but I heard something in a single word, the slightest crack in the pitch of her voice. I had mentioned everything that had happened in New Orleans, and I had seen the flicker of something across her eyes at the mention of Marcel. She shut it down so quickly and refused to mention him again that I had guessed there was some hidden past between Rebekah and Marcel, one that Klaus surely couldn't have enjoyed. "What are you saying?"

Davina rubbed the tears from her eyes and stared back at me, doing her best to appear empty. "When you guys killed me, you took his control of the witches away. They could use magic again without Marcel knowing, and they took control of the city. They were able to capture him, through killing many of the people around him, and New Orleans has become a war zone. The vampires are fighting, and the werewolves, now that Marcel is no longer in charge, are trying to come back to the town. It's become chaotic, and people are dying. Without Marcel, this will never stop."

I took a deep breath. "Okay. What can we do?"

She shook her head and let her eyes dart beside me, to the man who hadn't moved from directly beside me, to the point his arm was touching my own. "The witches won't give him to anyone but the Mikaelsons."

"That's so obviously a trap," Kol snorted.

"Obvious enough that we can evade it."

Kol's eyes were wide when they moved to Elijah, when his brows pulled up on his forehead. "What? Are you mad? You're not seriously considering this, are you?"

"I know that you and Marcellus have never been on good terms, brother, but he is family," Elijah reminded him, and he cleared his throat. "For Niklaus' sake, we have to do this."

Right now, that was probably the only thing Elijah could've said to get Kol to relent. Helping me find peace was one thing, but helping Klaus save someone he cared about . . . we owed that to him.

Arguments could be made that this was his ways of finding redemption for all the things that he had done, that he was paying with his time to ensure his siblings got to live the best eighteen or so years any of them could've hoped for. He was giving all of that peace and happiness up to give it to those he had wronged.

What he had done in the past didn't take away from what he was doing _now_. If we were going to properly thank him, this was the best way to do that—ensure nothing happened to a man he raised as a son.

Davina clearly wasn't expecting any of this, not Elijah's insistence to help or Kol's submission at the mention of Klaus, and that was odd to me. Marcel had to know what he meant to Klaus at the very least, and whatever past he and Rebekah secretly had would've obviously fueled her to help, right?

Yet Davina was surprised . . . which led me to believe she hadn't actually talked to Marcel about this at all.

What was actually going on here?

"I will go in to retrieve him myself, and if you don't hear from me within a couple days, send the army," Elijah suggested.

Hearing him call the people we had around us, the support we had for all of us and the twins, an army made me laugh, but it wasn't enough to stop me from shaking my head. "You can't do that, Elijah."

His smile widened in my direction, but there was a flash of something more in his eyes, something . . . specific to me alone. "I believe that I can."

If there was one thing I had learned over all the time I had spent with the Mikaelsons, it was how to communicate with them without words being spoken. In certain situations, it might be absolutely necessary, so we had all worked on it.

It's why I knew that Elijah was implying that there was something I could do, to ensure nothing happened to him.

And he was right. There were a million things that I could do.

I hadn't used magic since the barrier spell had gone so haywire, but if it meant protecting Elijah, protecting my family, I would absolutely do that.

Davina looked between Elijah and me, and she struggled to catch a breath. "N-No. That won't work. They didn't say one Mikaelson. They said all of them."

I was suddenly standing in front of Davina, holding onto her shoulders to force her stare into mine. "What are you hiding?"

Her eyes widened a bit in surprise, but there was an absence of dilating pupils. "What? I'm not hiding anything."

With a sigh, I closed my eyes and focused on the spell I had used on Marcel the day that I had turned her, the spell I hadn't had to use since. I didn't want to force Davina into painful submission to do it, but it was the best way to get into her bloodstream, to rip the vervain from her.

From the way she was actually screaming as she sank to her knees, I realized this spell was enhanced, too. It was far more powerful than I intended it to be, so I just worked faster. Ripping the vervain from her system and putting it into my own was enough to stop me in my tracks, to actually catch me off guard.

I hadn't realized until I felt it in me how much she had actually had, but it was a _lot_ , enough that I could barely focus. Davina stood to her feet, however, and she was pissed.

Vervain had proven to be less effective on Original vampires than it was any others, so within a few seconds, my scattered focus was becoming easier to get ahold of. It was becoming easier to stand there and look as if I didn't have vervain in me.

I grabbed onto her shoulders before she could ask what the hell I was doing, before she could ask how that was even possible, and focused on her eyes. "Tell me what's going on."

Watching them dilate, watching her expression clear with focus, was a beautiful sight to see right now, with the pain of the vervain singeing the inside of my veins. "The witches demanded all of the Mikaelsons. They said they would kill him if all eight of you don't show up."

Kol shook his head. "Finn's not coming. He's living his life. He won't come, not for this."

Davina's eyes blurred with tears again, with the realization that everything was out on the table now. "He has to, or they're going to kill Marcel."

"This is more than just a trap, Elijah," Kol disagreed, and he turned to stare at his brother, allow some of his irritation with the situation to show as his eyes hardened. "You see what this is."

"They said _eight_ ," Rebekah pointed out, in agreement with Kol. "Officially, there are only five."

That was horrifying to think about, but the witches had said eight Mikaelsons. I was considered a Mikaelson by the Mikaelsons, and Kol and I were engaged. Eventually, we would be married, and I'd officially be a Mikaelson to everyone, but right now, I wasn't.

The witches saw me that way, but that wasn't what I was concerned about. I wasn't that easy to kill.

There were two infant Mikaelsons who _were_ , however.

"No," I whispered, and my breaths grew heavy. "There are seven."

Rebekah paled, the realization suddenly hitting her as well, and she shook her head. "N-No. We absolutely cannot do this! We cannot walk straight into sudden death!"

"Maybe we don't have to." I tried to ignore the tears falling down Davina's face, with the rejection coming from everyone around her now. "Marcel has people. How far are his people willing to go to save him?"

She wiped tears away again, focused on only me, and her brow furrowed. "They would die for him."

"They may have to." I rubbed my hands over my face and took a deep breath. "The witches don't know what I'm capable of. They think I'm a hybrid."

Kol's eyes tightened. "And it needs to remain that way."

"Wait, what are you talking about?" Davina asked, and she began looking between Kol and me. "You're more than a hybrid? What else could you be?"

"Sweetheart, I turned you into a vampire because there were things you couldn't remember. I didn't do it because I wanted to."

I didn't have to look at Rebekah to cast an illusion spell over her, to make her appear like Davina. Davina, horrified as she stared at the perfect illusion of herself standing next to her, started looking around, but illusion spells had become easy, especially with all of this out of control magic.

By the time her eyes found Kol and Elijah, they appeared as her as well, and she couldn't stop turning between the three, looking for someone besides herself but only finding me.

She was breathless, but she focused on the only person who didn't appear like her. "What are you doing?"

"Illusion spells. They're quite handy." All it took was waving my hand out in front of me to remove them, to bring everyone back to the faces that I knew and loved. "Easy to do, easy to keep up from a distance."

Elijah was the only one who seemed intrigued. Kol was furious at the wild notion I was even considering, and Rebekah was just distraught. It was very clear that whatever had gone on between her and Marcel wasn't some fling, like what had gone on with her and Matt. This was very real, something eternal even, and the idea of losing him was getting to her.

She wouldn't sacrifice the twins for him, however.

"What are you thinking, Darcy?" Elijah asked, and he shifted his focus away from the frightened Davina and over to me.

"There is no way in hell we would bring them face-to-face with the witches," I said. "They need to see us all in New Orleans. I won't ask Finn to come, but he doesn't have to. If he's seen in New Orleans, that's all that matters."

Elijah frowned. "How are the illusions of us meant to confront them? They wouldn't know the first thing about speaking like us, about protecting themselves the way we would."

"It doesn't have to be believable for long. It just has to distract them so we can get in there and get Marcel out from wherever they're holding him." I focused back on Davina for a moment. "Can you get us to him?"

She nodded. "I can."

"Good." I hated having to use compulsion, but it had become absolutely necessary, for the safety of everyone. It had been the reason I turned her to begin with, so I could compel her. "Don't say a word to anyone about any of this. Don't tell anyone about my magic, and don't tell anyone about our plan."

Something I hadn't even thought about before occurred to me, not until I started to let her go. Davina was clearly gonna have to help us do this, and if she was helping us . . . with two eleven-month-old children, who were learning to walk and move around on their own, we couldn't just lock them away. Even if we could, she could _hear_ them.

I grabbed her attention once more. "Oh, one more thing. We have twins. You can't tell anyone about them either, and any time you're away from us, I don't want you to even remember them."

Her eyes rounded. "What?"

This was the first time Kol had been directly angry at me in a long time, and it was such a cute attempt at angry that I struggled not to laugh—I didn't want to piss him off anymore, after all. I watched him struggle to glare, watched him struggle to focus on the thing he hated feeling in my direction, but he just couldn't hold onto it.

He eventually gave up and just sighed. "Okay, why was that bit necessary?"

I shrugged. "Well, if she's helping us, she's gonna see them, and quite frankly, I don't need to keep putting vervain in my system, especially when we get to New Orleans. If she sees the twins then and she's not already compelled, then I have to compel her again."

Rebekah was able to pull herself out of the pain inside of her mind, the fear of the uncertainty around us. She was able to focus on some piece of light, something good—good enough that she actually smiled over at me. "Look at you, doing quite well at this surviving thing."

I imagined my smile was as bright as I felt on the inside, as the first Mikaelson to directly tell me that I was surviving well, but I let my gaze wander between the three around me—between Rebekah, Elijah, and Kol the longest.

"What can I say? I learned from the best."

* * *

 **So here it is, the beginning of the end. Maybe? I mean, part 4 is still up in the air, with the length of the outline continuing to grow with so much still left to do. I hope to not carry it on too much, but I also don't wanna leave anything undone.**

 **We'll see how it goes, but for now, let's focus on Spell It Out.**

 **I've gotten through chapter 10 written, and I hope to work on at least 11 tomorrow. I'm trying to stay far enough ahead that I have some leeway in case something comes up, or I get stuck. Just to keep this story going.**

 **Let me know what you guys think! I'm trying to keep the story compelling, so let me know if it gets too dry.**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	2. 01: The Call to Arms

"When the night has come,  
And the land is dark,  
And the moon is the only light we'll see,  
No, I won't be afraid. No, I won't be afraid.  
Just as long as you stand, stand by me.  
So darlin', darlin', stand by me."

 _Stand By Me_ : Skylar Grey

* * *

I didn't know how Klaus traveled with all of the coffins the way that he did. Rebekah and Elijah made it look easy, as they were used to their brothers being daggered and brought along with them, but seriously, it was annoying.

We had gotten our time. All of us graduated high school. We got to spend an entire summer as a family, without fear and without danger. The twins got to experience a pool, which was awesome. They loved it, surprisingly, and we watched as the first year of their life began to slip away.

All things considered, we were fortunate. It took a long time for New Orleans to catch back up to us, but it did so, in a way that we couldn't ignore.

Every part of me was scared, but there was no other way around it. Ignoring the witches of New Orleans would have a deadly cost, and honestly, there had been enough death. There was surely more looming, but Klaus had given his life and his time for the twins. The least we could do was take care of the man he considered family.

We approached New Orleans with extreme caution. Though we packed for a long stay, I hoped it didn't take that long. Getting in and out was the best course of action, for the twins and for each of us.

"Are you sure this is a good idea?"

I hated asking the question, especially since I had been the one most adamant about doing it, but now that we were here, there wasn't much chance to turn back. For Klaus' sake, we had to do this.

"I don't think it is," Kol whispered, and he looked over at me now. Right now, in the face of danger, the melted stare was gone, replaced by something harder, the same thing I had seen when we confronted Marcel all those months ago. "But we can't exactly eliminate the threat in New Orleans outside of New Orleans. If we've learned anything from this, it's that running with them doesn't work, and sending them away doesn't work. I think all we've done is proven that the safest place for them to be is wherever we are, and with any luck, we can figure out why your magic is so out of control while we're here. Just a bonus."

The day of prom, we learned that my magic was a bit out of control, and it hadn't made much sense to me. I didn't feel all that different, but the differences I felt, I believed they were accredited to finally breaking my werewolf curse and awakening as tribrid.

The more time that went on, the worse it got. Some days, I could control it, but lately, the best way to control it was by not using magic at all. Since I was the only witch we knew, the only one trusted within the circle of people protecting the twins, that was bad. I had to figure out what was going on, figure out how to control myself so that I could use magic any time I needed.

At least Klaus' coffin was still cloaked. I could find comfort in that.

The worst part, the parts that I had been too afraid to tell even Kol, were that sometimes, when the magic was out of control, I saw flashes of things, things inside of New Orleans. I didn't want him to know that something was drawing me back, especially after learning what we had to bring us back to begin with.

Would he have let us come? I didn't imagine he would, and people would end up dead. The twins absolutely came first, but that didn't mean we were just going to leave family behind to die.

I hoped the witches of New Orleans might have some answers, assuming they would even give them if they did. They claimed to have no quarrel against us, but then they purposely lured us here.

The moment we drove through the borders of New Orleans, everything became suddenly different, and that was yet another thing I was terrified to tell anyone. It was like I was suddenly hyperaware of everything, of the many strangers around me, or the wind as it blew the trees around like crazy.

The sun was somehow hotter than I remembered, too, and it was the beginning of December. Last time I had been here, it was the middle of February. Things were getting closer to warming up, but they were just starting to get cold this time.

How could the sun feel hotter? Was it because of the chill in the air?

I didn't know, but I didn't like it. I was ready to do what we needed to do and get out, as soon as we figured out what was wrong with me. It felt more and more like a trap the more that went on, and the longer we sat on the streets of New Orleans, the more powerful I could feel my blood becoming.

It was more than my blood. It was the magic inside of me, magic that I didn't know could exist inside, other than in my blood. This wasn't in my blood. It was in my system, in a way that magic didn't linger this long.

For the sake of family, I hid it as best I could and simply focused on "hiding" amongst the crowd. The plan had been fairly simple. We were gonna sit there and pretend that we were hiding, even though we were actually trying to be subtly seen. Whatever the witches wanted us here for, they needed to see us here, all of us—even though all of us weren't actually here.

They would see differently, at least I hoped considering I had no idea what my magic was capable of anymore.

There was a place for us to stay that the Mikaelsons were in control of. Since they had stayed here for so long, more than two centuries, it wasn't hard to understand why they might have many places to go.

One was the place that Marcel had taken over, but another was currently unoccupied, the safest place away from it all. As soon as we ate and made our "hidden" appearance, that was exactly where planned to go.

Alastor and Theia were sitting on the table in front of us, as we didn't want to waste time getting high chairs. At almost a year old, they were able to sit up by themselves, obviously since they were also walking around like champions. They weren't very good at it yet, but they had just started. They could pull themselves up and toddle off on their own, though someone was always nearby in case they began to fall. Vampire reflexes and speed had come in handy quite a few times, though sometimes, letting them fall on their butts was good. Otherwise, how would they learn about pain and how to live with it? How would they learn to evaluate life and evaluate the dangers of their actions?

It was crazy to think that way, but I wanted them to have the best chance at life. We were working hard to ensure they had it, but I wanted them to be able to live their lives without fear, but without the overwhelming desire to kill anyone in their way as well. I didn't like thinking about it, but I absolutely didn't want them to take notes from their aunt and uncles, their _dad_.

I had learned the hard way that sometimes, death was, unfortunately, necessary. The Gemini had all but forced our hand, but that didn't mean that killing everyone who simply annoyed them was okay. I wanted them to value human life, the way that Kol learned to after falling in love with one.

Theia was too damn cute, playing with the straw in my cup as if it was the most fascinating thing in the world. I imagined that right now, to her, it was, so I had to take a picture of it.

There were a lot of people back in Virginia who needed to see it. We had contemplated bailing on the Thanksgiving plans, but we had to take time to come up with a real plan of action instead of just blindly springing the trap. Because of that, we ended up leaving Virginia at the start of December, and convincing them not to come to New Orleans with us had been a challenge. The only reason anyone but the Mikaelsons were here was because Sutton, Ayven, and Oryn didn't have a choice in the matter.

Elena, Caroline, and Bonnie were all in college, something they insisted I should take part in. I wanted no part in it, however, so I didn't. Maybe one day, I might decide to go to college and do something with my eternity, but today wasn't that day, or any time within the future of eighteen years. I wanted them to have their lives, to live them however they wanted, so I was grateful they were getting the chance.

Alaric actually managed to get a teaching job at Whitmore, the same job his wife had previously held. It didn't bother him to be there, and in fact, he enjoyed having a purpose in life again. After turning into a vampire, after the dangers with the Gemini had passed, he felt lost. He had no idea what to even do with his life anymore, but he found purpose again, at least for a time.

Jeremy, since he refused to go back to school, was living with Damon in the Salvatore boarding house. I didn't think that would ever happened, considering how much Jeremy still didn't like Damon. He was, though, because it beat living in his childhood home completely alone.

I was just glad that Caroline had something to do with her life, to distract her from the potentially lonely eighteen years ahead. She didn't like to think about it, but she told me that eighteen years was a long time, a long time to not feel anything. She admitted that she had fallen for Klaus, and the idea of finding pleasure in other people while he was daggered, after he had given his life and time to save the twins, sickened her. It was going to be an eighteen year spirit quest for her, but she was going to get through it.

We were all gonna get through it, and in the end, it would all be worth it.

Those were the only people that had decided to stay behind in Virginia. Stefan came with Ayven, as they were a pretty steady, pretty cute thing going on. It was serious enough that they were talking about life outside of all of this, talking about breaking her sire bond so she might travel the world with him.

I was so glad to see him move on from Elena. He was happy, in the way that he deserved.

Obviously, Shea wasn't gonna take no for an answer with her fiancé forced to be here.

Sutton was beyond adorable about it. He actually asked Prisca and me for help, and he did this huge elaborate proposal that Shea wanted to kill him for—except she secretly didn't because deep down, she adored the huge and elaborate gesture. I told her that he contemplated a parade, but she would've punched him. So he decided against it.

They were engaged now, freshly, but she absolutely couldn't stop talking about the date, the _when_ of it all. It was actually kinda funny to watch because even in the middle of this chaos, she was asking Sutton if he thought getting married in New Orleans was a good idea.

She loved the life in New Orleans, the look of it all, and Sutton simply said that he didn't care when, where, or how as long as he ended up married to her at the end of the day.

It was hard not to look at the ring on my finger, to not think about all the possibilities ahead.

Shea seemed to notice my drifting eyes, to the very thoughts that could actually help me forget everything going on—crazy magic included. "Seriously, I don't know how you've done it. He proposed two weeks ago, and I'm already setting the date."

"Life's crazy, Shea." Even with my eyes on the ring I began fiddling around on my finger, I could see Kol fighting a smile, the same adorable smile he got any time someone asked about a date, or somehow just reminded him that we were engaged and getting married. "I'm also, you know, nineteen years old."

"It's really easy to forget that, actually." She frowned. "Well, I mean, the reason it's stupid to get married young is because you don't know yourself. You don't know what you're doing with life. You don't know what the plan is . . . but you know all of that, so it kinda doesn't matter, right?"

"I'm not waiting because I'm too young to get married," I reminded her. "I'm waiting because I want my kids to be able to walk down the aisle."

Sutton's brows rose on his forehead. "They can walk just fine, especially for their age."

"Not if they're dead." It was the bleakest thought in the world, but it was one I had to face. "Not if whatever is going on here kills them before there's anything we can do to stop it."

Kol reached over and grabbed onto my hand suddenly, turning himself to face me more fully so he could catch my eye. He did, and I was so glad that he did. The hardened stare was melted into the soft embrace I desperately needed right now.

He brought my hand up to his lips, to place a soft kiss against it. "I swear to you, love. Nothing is going to happen to the twins. That's why we're here, to ensure that _nothing_ happens to our family."

He was right, of course. Every threat that had come our way had been put to an end, and the daggered Original hybrid in a coffin was proof of that. He had given up his time to ensure the twins had a chance at life, and wallowing around worrying if a threat might take them down wasn't going to save them. It wasn't going to properly honor his sacrifice.

It would be us, the crazy and wild family that we had all become. We would save the twins, from anything.

* * *

 **A/N: To mark the completion of the outline for part 3, I decided to post a chapter today.**

 **It has been officially decided. There's gonna be a part 4. I wasn't gonna do it because I don't wanna drag this out, but it's necessary. Part 3 is 46 chapters, plus the prologue and epilogue. To finish everything that needed to happen, it could be that many more, or maybe less but still way too many. There was a fitting place to end it, so I did.**

 **Fair warning, though. The ending. My heart. Uhh.**

 **I hope my writing is compelling emotionally to those of you reading as it is to me as the writer. I hope you guys enjoy where this story is going.**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	3. 02: Making a Stand

"This is me, honestly.  
I've got no apologies.  
I'm done chasing things that don't belong to me.  
This is real. It's how I feel.  
With one shoulder on the wheel,  
What I'm searching for grows further out of reach."

 _Naivety_ : A Day to Remember

* * *

The more we talked about going to New Orleans, the more I realized that I needed to learn the history behind their stay in New Orleans. On the way over, I learned that they had lived here for centuries. It had been their home more than anything else had been, and they were happy here. Even Kol admitted that he liked the place for what it was, though he wouldn't mind settling somewhere else.

They had made nice with the governor. They had a mutual relationship. The governor allowed them freedom to live as vampires, under his protection and in his home, in exchange for gold. Rebekah had fallen in love with his son, and when she asked Klaus if she could turn him, Klaus killed him.

It made a lot more sense why no one had ever found love before, real love. Elijah said that he had loved twice before, but those loves clearly never lasted. It just gave more understanding as to why Kol might feel obligated to go to such lengths to protect me, though having the twins sort of sealed my "Klaus won't kill me" fate in enough on its own.

At the funeral for his son, they came across a young slave boy, who was being whipped as they passed. They all knew it was secretly the governor's bastard son, but he was treated as any other slave was. When this little boy picked up and apple and threw it at the man beating him, Klaus saw a kindred spirit, and before he could get beaten harder for throwing the apple back, Klaus killed the man and approached the boy. He asked him his name, and the boy said that he didn't have one. Something about his mother wouldn't name him until he turned ten, in case the fever took him, but then she died of the fever before she could give him one. Klaus took him in, thus giving him the name Marcellus: little warrior.

The plantation home where they used to live, before moving to a different place in the center of New Orleans, was the only place Rebekah could safely get us all into. The moment we stepped through the doors, I dropped the illusion put over Ayven and Stefan, making them appear as themselves again instead of Sage and Finn.

Despite what it was, it was a beautiful home, rich with history. Everything about it was elegant, with the Greek revival style décor inside and out. It wasn't exactly my favorite, but it was charming. I liked it a lot better than the place back in Mystic Falls.

Kol had stolen every glance at me he could since the moment we arrived, but he was a bit too preoccupied to watch me fully. At the sight of my excitement, however, his eyes lit up like the sun rising in the sky, and it was beautiful to see, more interesting than the home around me for sure.

"I thought you might like it."

He was only immensely more appealing with the little ones attached to his hand, holding onto his fingers like they were their lifelines. I never expected such patience from Kol, but he walked slowly, helping our kids walk their own way in.

Even when they struggled to step up the stairs, he helped them by giving them a boost, all while making them laugh with glee.

Their walking skills weren't exactly where they needed to be, but they were capable of moving around on their own now. It was frightening, considering they weren't even a year old yet, but it was also thrilling. There were endless possibilities ahead.

At the sight of their toothy smiles, I actually got lost in the moment, lost in how precious my family really was. They weren't the best at walking, but you couldn't tell by their demeanor. They walked around like champions, like _they_ were helping _Kol_ walk.

Alastor's eyes twinkled at the sight of me, and he immediately let go of Kol's finger, barely inside the door. "Mama."

I met him halfway and scooped down to pick him up. "Hey there, baby." I pressed a kiss against the top of his head and took a moment to smell the lavender baby shampoo.

It was my favorite baby shampoo, and it helped them sleep. It also helped that they both had super thick hair now, to the point we were gonna have to cut Alastor's soon. Theia's was just starting to grow out, the way one might expect on a little girl, but her hair also had so many more curls than little Alastor.

Every day, they both somehow looked more like themselves yet still closer resembling someone else. Alastor, for example, with his thickening hair looked like a miniature Kol, though his eyes were blue—the same stunning blue Rebekah had.

Theia's eyes were the same golden brown of Kol's, and I adored that so much. They both had the dark brown hair that was to be expected, though neither showed signs of partial albinism or heterochromia. That was nice.

With my eyes on Kol, who was now holding Theia, I saw as Davina stepped inside behind him. She had adjusted to vampirism better than I expected, and that made me feel good. That, paired with everything we were doing to help her rescue Marcel, I _almost_ felt like I might be able to move past what I had done.

The daylight ring was the perfect addition to that. With Marcel losing control of the witches and New Orleans, he wasn't able to get her a ring made, which had been why she got to us so late in the night. I was more than willing to make one, though I had to give her the condition that she help us get Marcel. I had to be mean and pretend that I would strip the magic away, but Davina said what I needed to hear. We were helping Marcel, and that mattered most to her.

From the way it seemed, Marcel was very much like a father figure to her.

Davina's eyes were shining as she looked to the twins, and I loved seeing the human parts of Davina. Even before I made her a vampire, she was an arrogant witch with immense power, but the human parts of her still remained. I didn't have to feel so bad about turning her. I could now say that once we saved Marcel, we were even.

I hadn't _killed_ her. I just turned her life upside down, and that was good.

Rebekah stepped in behind her and let out an exasperated sigh. "We should really find people to carry our things for us."

"Darcy wouldn't allow that, remember?" Elijah stepped in behind her, carrying his own bag with his eyes tightened at the corners, focused on me immediately. "She calls it a waste of human effort, whereas our strength replenishes easily."

"Yes, _with_ humans." Rebekah didn't hesitate to send a rather nasty glare my way, one I just smiled and ignored. "I'm not so sure how I feel about you calling the shots here."

I knew I shouldn't have laughed, but I did anyways. Honestly, I wasn't so sure _why_ I got put in charge, but maybe it had a lot to do with the fact that I was the best shot at getting Marcel out of there.

My eyes drifted to the baby in my hands, and at the sight of him chewing on his hand, I let out a sigh and took it out. "Baby, we've been over this. You're gonna draw blood, and knowing our luck, you'll like it and start feeding from yourself or your sister."

"I really don't think it's going to work that way," Rebekah said, for at least the fifth time. "They _are_ still human."

Davina stepped a bit closer to me, her smile growing the more her eyes softened, and she gestured to Alastor. "Can I hold him?"

Everyone around the room suddenly grew stiff, as if there was something Davina could actually do to hurt him. She had no magic, and she wasn't stupid enough to try and hurt him with me standing right there. It was a genuine question. She just wanted to hold the young child.

Good on her. He was fucking adorable.

With a smile given in return, I handed him over to her carefully, and I watched him squeal at the sight of a new person holding him, a new _woman_ in particular. "Sure. He's a bit of a flirt, so watch out."

"That's what you get for naming him after his father," Rebekah informed me. "You get a young version _of_ his father."

The smile that grew across Kol's lips as he looked to his sister, tearing his eyes off of the little angel in his arms for the first time since he had picked her up, was triumphant, glowing with pride. "The world could use more of me." He looked back to Theia now, and his smile softened. "Wouldn't you agree, little one?"

Rebekah folded her arms over her chest. "No."

"I didn't ask you," Kol pointed out, though he didn't bother looking at his sister. "I think Theia would agree with me."

Her annoyance remained in her tight stare as it moved over to Davina, who was lost in the cuteness of Alastor's flirty smile. "Have you spoken with the witches?"

That was enough to rip her away from Alastor, at least temporarily. "Yes. They wanna meet tonight, at the Abattoir."

"The where?"

Kol gave me a soft smile, looking away from the little angel in his arms and over to me again. "The place we met with Marcel last time we were here, love."

"Right." I decided to focus on Davina again, as she was the one with the information I needed most. "Have you spoken with the six vampires I need?"

She nodded. "They should be here any minute."

"Great." Almost as if Shea could read my mind, she came walking through the still open door of the house, followed directly by Sutton. "Is it possible to do an illusion spell and a protection spell all at the same time, on all six people?"

She scoffed, but her lips pressed into a thin smile. "With the way your magic is right now, probably."

Kol let out a sigh, and his gaze wandered towards Davina. "You might know something about this. Ever since Darcy sucked that ridiculous amount of magic from you, she's been unstable, and it grows worse every day."

It was never a good sign when someone suddenly froze, in the middle of a heartwarming situation such as holding an adorable almost one year old child. If something in her thoughts was bad enough to take her away from the cuteness of Alastor, it was definitely very, very bad.

Her eyes widened and moved to me, and she took a shaky breath. "I-I didn't know that you stole my magic."

"Well, yeah, that was the point of the compulsion," I said. "To ensure you didn't know any of this was possible. Why does it matter? What's the big deal about it?"

"The big deal is that we thought my magic died when I did," she said, but she had to swallow, her eyes further widening as she looked between Kol and me. "The _witches_ thought it died, but it didn't. It's in you."

"I'm lost." I tried to take a deep breath, to calm the panic setting inside of me, but it felt like my nerves were twisting around one another, my stomach attempting to explode on itself. "What's so special about your magic?"

She shook her head. "It wasn't just my magic. It was the magic of three others from my coven. We were selected to be a part of what's known as the Harvest Ritual, something that my coven has to do every three hundred years in order to keep our ties with the Ancestors. If we don't, we lose connection, and we lose our magic."

She hesitated, and it probably made sense if it had anything to do with this ritual. The witches would want to keep their connection with their magic, and if they were somehow unable, obviously they would be frantically trying to get it back.

Was that what this was? Some attempt to make us figure out how to keep their magic? Did they know something that we didn't?

I didn't like this, not one bit. If they thought their magic was lost, they probably didn't care what happened to them after that. If they were going down, what if this was their way to ensure they went down with a bang? By taking out the Mikaelson twins that the world had already decided didn't need to exist?

I was already ready to leave, and we had just gotten here.

"I was the fourth girl in the ritual," Davina continued to explain, after she collected her thoughts a bit. "They told us they would prick our hands and put us into a magical slumber for a year, that we would wake up reborn, and it would be over. What they didn't tell us was that the sleep we were going into was death. They didn't prick our hands. They slit our throats, and Marcel saved me from that. I was the last one supposed to die, but I didn't."

"You had the power of the three witches who fell before you." Kol's brow scrunched, but he continued to focus on Davina. "Is that how he knew when the witches practiced magic? Through you?"

She nodded. "It was supposed to be over. It was supposed to be finished, and we were just holding out, hoping that they would lose their magic. They only have until the end of the year before the time to complete the Harvest has passed, ensuring that the Ancestors abandon them."

"So you're telling me that all of this could've been avoided had we just waited until January?" I asked, and it admittedly came out a bit icier than I intended. She was holding my son, however, and Kol was holding Theia. Every person whose life I valued far more than my own, aside from the few safe in Virginia, was inside of this room, had walked right into what very well could be the witches' final stand.

And I led them here.

"They have Marcel!" she insisted. "The last thing they will do with their magic is kill Marcel."

I shook my head. "No, I'm pretty sure the last thing they plan to do is kill my kids, and you led us here to let them do that."

"If they find out that you have the magic, that the Harvest can still be completed, they will want to complete it," Davina said, but tears were filling her eyes. "Whatever happens, you can't let the witches complete the Harvest."

"I don't help people who threaten my kids, so fuck them and their stupid Harvest ritual," I said, and I took a deep breath, to try and focus my thoughts. We were here, and there was no way in hell we were coming into this for nothing. That didn't mean we had to stay long, but we did need to get Marcel and get out. "The best way to ensure the witches can't hurt my kids is to ensure they never get their magic back."

Everything started becoming strange, hazy. It was like the room was suddenly loud and overcrowded by people talking to me at once, but it was a single moment of scattered voices. My eyes couldn't focus, and I found myself looking around for something, anything.

Yet I could barely even see.

I had no idea what was happening, what I could even say, but there was this sudden surge of _power_ beyond belief that coursed through me, igniting every tiny piece of my body until I felt more alive than I ever had before.

I didn't know how I ended up on my knees, but I didn't get a chance to think or ask because everything around me disappeared into nothing, faded into black.

All I could see was a face of a woman I didn't know, someone that I had never seen before in all of my life.

Then . . . nothing.

* * *

 **A/N: So I tried to write that how it went in the show, but it might be a little bit different. I watched Davina going through that at least five times trying to figure it out, so I hope I did it right.**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	4. 03: Wild Plans

"Don't you surrender, no.  
There's no surrender.

Nothing's ever gonna change  
If you don't stand up and you don't say nothing.  
Waiting on better days,  
But they won't show up if you don't do nothing.  
You're not safe."

 _Nothing_ : Papa Roach

* * *

The light was . . . far brighter than I remembered when I could see again, when I could see everyone standing around me, looking at me as if something was wrong. I couldn't see either of the twins, but Ayven and Stefan weren't in view either. I imagined they probably had something to do with that.

Kol was the closest, and at the sight of me looking at him, he visibly relaxed. Reaching one hand out to touch my face, his eyes softened. "Are you alright?"

"I-I don't know what just happened." My bottom lip trembled. "What's happening to me?"

He reached his hands down, to grab onto mine, and he helped me off the floor, onto my feet. As I stood up, I could suddenly see the floor that I had been laying in, see what I had done to the wooden floors.

Using something, my nail maybe, I had carved a person, someone's face that I couldn't recognize.

Davina noticed where my eyes were locked, and she sighed. "That's Jane-Anne Deveraux."

"Who the bloody hell is that?" Kol snapped. "What the fuck is going on? Why is this happening to her?"

"She's connected to the witches," Davina tried to explain, but Kol's anger had her a bit flustered, like I imagine it did to most people. "She can sense when they use magic, and it shows her who is doing what. You can . . . you can stop them from hurting Marcel. You can feel their power. You can protect him from here!"

I could do that?

Of course I could do that. I could do a lot of things, which was a long stretch from the doppelgänger who wasn't allowed to practice magic out of fear the Original hybrid might find out she was a witch, or worse, a werewolf.

I was the Original tribrid, and I now had the power of three other witches, power that my siphoning didn't just eat away like other sources of magic. That gave me access to way more magic than I actually needed, way more than I _wanted_ , but I could use it to protect my family, at least while I needed to do so.

Obviously going on a power trip was a really bad idea, but I could save Marcel, for Davina and Klaus. I could get him to safety, find a way to protect them until the new year, and I could get out of dodge, where this power wasn't so out of control.

The scratched sketch of a woman I didn't recognize was proof enough that this was beyond me, beyond out of control.

With this power, I could do a lot more than just protect Marcel from here. The plan had been to put an illusion on six people, making them appear as the Mikaelson family, while someone snuck in to save him.

Why did we have to do that? There was a much safer way, one that didn't risk anyone's life at all.

"I can do more than that."

It hadn't occurred to me until I rubbed my hand over my forehead, until I took a good look around the room, but more people had arrived, were standing in the doorway of the home as if they were waiting to be invited inside. They were the six vampires I requested, or at least they better have been. I didn't want a lot of random strangers around right now because that meant I had a lot of people to compel.

There was one of the six who stuck out, and maybe it was the hat he wore. His face was cute, but he only stood out because the hat was just a different variation of the hat he had worn the day I first met him.

 _How_ I had met him had been pretty rude on my part, or maybe rude on theirs? They were the ones trying to vervain me, after all.

"Oh hey." I gave him the best smile I could right now, with all the chaos around me. "Sorry about throwing vervain in your face, but Marcel was trying to get me to drink it. Um, I don't need you guys anymore, so just go back to doing whatever it was that you were doing."

Elijah's head tilted to the side a bit, the corners of his eyes scrunching in perfect unison with his pressing lips. "Wait, what?"

I knew that this was _not_ the time to answer him, not with the vampires still here, so I just began gesturing them away, acting as if he hadn't spoken at all. Obviously I didn't like just calling all the shots and making plans, but right now, I _didn't_ need six random vampires doing this for me.

I didn't need anyone. I could do it all on my own, or could use the people that I trusted that is.

Five of the six were compliant, though they were grumbling about how annoying this was to be dragged around like someone's little bitch—I barely listened, mostly because I didn't care at the moment—but the man with the hat, the one I had thrown vervain into his face, stood firm, even looked a bit pissed that I had the gall to suggest he leave.

I stared up at him, but even as I folded my arms over my chest, an attempt to intimidate him, he stood firm.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I'm gonna help rescue Marcel."

"Great. Then why don't you sneak down there and get me some of his blood? Oh wait. You can't do that because you will _die_." I let out an exasperated sigh. "I swear to you that by the end of the day, you will have your friend back in one piece. The best way to help is to stay out of the way."

"Get his blood?" Rebekah asked, and she let out a breath of her own. "Darcy, what are you going on about?"

I wasn't entirely sure, but I knew that whatever I did would require his blood. Most spells required the blood of the target, or the blood of the target's closest relative. Since he didn't have any still alive, that required his blood.

There was only one way to get his blood, however. No one would be able to sneak in and get down there, not without actually being invisible.

I turned back to face the man in the hat. "You know what? You actually may be of use to me. Do you know where they're keeping him?"

He nodded. "We all do. We just can't get to him."

" _Couldn't_ get to him." I gave him a playful smirk, one that only made his eyes grow wide. "Come on in, sir. Let me show you just how lucky you are."

The confusion was apparent everywhere around me, from Davina to the Mikaelsons, even as Shea and Sutton stared at me, heads tilted to the side a bit with focused eyes.

Kol, however, was more than just confused. From the way his eyes burned, I knew that he very much enjoyed what was happening around us. I hadn't thought too much about it, but seriously, what was I doing?

Why was I being so bossy? I was treating them like they were worthless, but that wasn't how I intended it. I just needed to get this done so we could get home, so we could get out of New Orleans for good. There wasn't time to be polite, as awful as it may have been to just be bossy.

Sometimes, bossy was what got things done when they needed to get done.

I swallowed down the guilt and focused on the man again, the one I was tired of calling vervain guy, or hat guy for that matter. "What's your name?"

"Thierry."

"Okay, Thierry. I know we've had our differences, but here's what I need you to do. Walk into wherever they have Marcel, go down to him, extract enough of his blood to fill . . . ." My eyes were moving around the room, and I found what I needed just across it, closer to the massive stairwell. I felt like I was floating, or maybe dancing my way over to it, but I didn't focus on that and instead just picked up the small bowl, meant for decoration. "This, and then bring it back to me."

"They'll kill me if I try to get in there again," he said, and he shook his head. "If they don't, the werewolves will."

I just gave him a smile and turned to the people around me, the people that were my family. It was crazy if I thought too much about it, but a year could change everything. It _had_ changed everything.

A single month had changed everything, so an entire year? My life was never gonna be the same again.

The three Mikaelsons in the room were gawking at me, though Kol was doing his best to suppress his grin, and I just smirked at little in his direction. "Okay. I need someone to be the recipient of the vervain in his system."

Kol took a deep breath. "If it means you stop putting it in yourself, I'll do it."

I guess I should've known that he would step up, but I really wished that someone else had. The idea of putting vervain in his system, especially a lot of it . . . I didn't wanna do it. I didn't wanna put it into anyone's system, but _Kol's_ especially.

Elijah smiled at me, despite his confusion. "Don't worry, Darcy. I will take it."

"Sorry." I gave him a grateful smile and turned back towards Thierry, gesturing Elijah over with a single hand. When he stood next to me, I placed the two face-to-face, and I started focusing on Thierry, on doing the weakest pain infliction spell that I could do.

It still brought him to his knees, but that was okay. It would be over soon.

For the first time since I did the spell, I didn't just move the vervain into me. Putting it into Elijah was just as easy. I just had to focus a little, focus on Elijah, and it was very apparent when it was there.

Elijah stumbled back a bit, a sweat breaking out across his skin instantly, and he sucked in a loud breath. Rebekah came to his side to help him stay properly on his feet, and I could focus on Thierry, focus on staring into his eyes.

"Wait here."

I didn't imagine I had to compel him to get him to do that, but I did anyways, just to be sure. Right now, I needed to get him something proper to put Marcel's blood in, not the oversized decoration bowl at the front.

The kitchen was massive, definitely fitting of the house, but it wasn't so big that it was overwhelming. The cabinets were actually still full of dishes, which was only surprising until I remembered that they had gotten the fuck out of dodge when their dad had shown up.

Finding the bowls took searching through a couple cabinets, but I was trying to be quick about it. The faster we got this done, the faster we got out of here.

I had no idea what was happening to me. I had no idea the power I had inside of me, but I didn't want it. Clearly, I wasn't using it like I was used to. My body wasn't absorbing it, so the only way to make it go away was for the witches to lose their power or complete this Harvest.

How could we do that? I couldn't die, or at least that was what we told ourselves. Truth was, we had no idea how far these witches were willing to go, and if they found a way to kill me . . . I was linked to Kol's life. As far as we knew, there wasn't a way to kill an Original, but ways popped up seemingly overnight. Enough magic could kill an Original, and if they were desperate enough, what if they brought Esther somehow?

There was only one way to ensure nothing happened to anyone in my family—not Kol, not his siblings, not me, and definitely not the twins. We had to get out of New Orleans as fast as we could, without leaving anyone behind.

There were footsteps behind me, and I didn't have to turn to know that it was Kol. Anyone could've followed me, but he would've been there for sure. Since there was only one set of steps, I knew it was him.

"What is it that you're doing exactly?"

I pulled a small cup from the cabinets and turned back to face him. "Look, I know this sounds crazy, but I-I can feel him."

His eyebrows rose. "What?"

"If I can get a connection to him, I can get him out of there," I reiterated, as I realized that came out wrong. I couldn't exactly sense Marcel, but I could find a way to be able to do that long enough to get him out of wherever they were holding him.

"How?" he asked, and this was a long stretch from the loving Kol who supported my every decision. This was the man who had acted in the face of bad things happening, who had done things that might be viewed as stupid and reckless for the sake of the woman he loved and for his own good. This was a man facing consequences that I wasn't letting myself think about right now. "How are you going to do that? You've never done anything like this before."

"You're right," I agreed. "I haven't, but I have more power than I've ever had before."

"Yes, power," he said, but his words were hard, tightened with the fear for my well-being. He hadn't been afraid for me in a long time, but he had reason to be now. "Power that the witches of New Orleans are surely going to sense if you do this."

"They can't!" I insisted. "I can sense them. They can't sense me."

"How do you know?" he asked. "How do you know anything about this?"

I had to take a deep breath, to remind myself that Kol was just scared for me and just looking out for me. "I can feel it, okay? Every time they do something, use magic to hurt Marcel, I feel it. I can't feel his pain, but I can feel them doing _something_. Kol, I can do this. Please."

"Okay." He was suddenly in front of me, suddenly placing his hand across my cheeks to hold me, to connect our eyes and our bodies in a way that made everything else not matter. It gave us both a chance to relax, to breathe and take a step back from our frantic thoughts and emotions and focus on the constructive things. "Do this. Are you sure there's not a safer way?"

I shook my head. "We need to get Marcel and get the hell out of town. We can do that by tonight if we do this my way."

"But we can do it by tomorrow if we just _wait_ ," he reminded me. "Please, Darcy. I know what it's like to want to act without thinking, but we don't know the consequences of this."

"You don't get it, do you?" I couldn't look him in the eyes, not to say this part, and I hated that. "If I don't get out of town, the witches have a chance to find me."

"Okay," he said, but there was obvious confusion in a single word. "What can they do to you?"

"They can kill me!"

He turned my face up some more, to force our eyes to connect. "No, they can't! I ensured no one could do that."

"Did you?" I asked, and I saw his eyes widen, saw pain take over the anger for a moment. This wasn't about not trusting him, not trusting that he knew what he was doing. We had no idea what we were up against at this point. "Vampires can't have kids, Kol. What if . . . what if they kill you? There's a million different impossible things that could happen, but we've already seen the impossible! We see it every day! I wanna get this done, and I wanna leave New Orleans because by January, we won't have to worry about it anymore. While we're here, it's a problem."

"Okay," he whispered, and he leaned down, close enough that his forehead could press against mine. He didn't stop talking, but he didn't have to be silent for this intimate gesture to settle us both on the inside. "Okay, love. I promise we will. We will do this your way. We won't even unpack. We'll be ready to leave. We'll leave as soon as Marcel is safe."

I began gnawing on my bottom lip. "And we figure out how to keep him that way."

He pulled back away from me now, his eyes tightened. "What?"

"Oh, come on," I said, and I stared up at him. "You know that they're gonna want to keep him safe. We have to figure out a way to do that, for Klaus if nothing else."

His jaw tightened, but the anger wasn't exactly directed at me at this point. "How are we going to do that?"

"I'll put up a boundary spell," I said, though I wasn't actually sure I was capable of controlling any of this at this point. "I'll figure something out. Just something to hold until January."

"Of course you'll figure it out." Watching the anger melt away, replaced by something much softer and far more gentle, melted my heart. Kol had a way of doing that effortlessly, and I loved him more and more every day for it. "You're Darcy Gilbert, one of the most stubborn and incredible people I've ever known."

My eyebrows rose. "Stubborn?"

"Yes, you are stubborn," he said, though his laughter only made his smile grow wider. "You know, as a human, you would make these smartass remarks to my brother, knowing that there was nothing he could do to hurt you because you were his doppelgänger. If he hurt you, he lost you, and you used that to your advantage, to get whatever you wanted. You were such a smartass, and I loved you for it. I still do, that same stubborn little girl with a new fire in her eyes."

"Oh, so I'm little now?"

"Well, you are very little." He didn't give me another moment to protest that because his arms suddenly wrapped around me, pulled me into the most comforting hug he could possibly have given me in that moment. Right now, I needed to feel safe, and I did, in the strength of his protective arms, the arms that would do whatever it took to ensure my safety. "I will keep you safe. You must know that."

"I do," I whispered. "I know that you'll do whatever it takes, but we can't prepare for the things we don't know. And all of this? We don't know. We know nothing about any of it."

He sighed, though his grip on me only barely loosened. "You're right."

"But I can do this. I can save Marcel my way."

* * *

 **A/N: When I started writing the outline, I didn't actually intend for the story to get so busy so quickly, but it doesn't really slow down. A lot happens in this story, a lot that I was not emotionally capable of handling at some points. Just get ready. ;)**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	5. 04: The Escape

"This is ten percent luck,  
Twenty percent skill,  
Fifteen percent concentrated power of will."

 _Remember the Name_ : Fort Minor

* * *

Unlit candles surrounded me, in the perfect circle. If all went well, they'd be lit by the end of the spell, and hopefully that would be enough to contain the magic. I had never used so many candles for one spell before, never seen so many used, but it was a powerful spell with powerful magic.

The cup of Marcel's blood was in my hands, and before drinking it to get it into my system, I tuned into the magic. It was the first time I had really focused, as I didn't wanna understand it before. At this point, I had to do it. It was the safest and quickest way to get Marcel out so we could get the hell out of town.

I could feel it moving through every part of me, as powerfully as I could feel every touch Kol gave me. It had been stupid to believe that vampirism wouldn't make sex better. Vampirism heightened everything, so why wouldn't it heighten sex?

The magic wasn't heightened, other than the power behind it. It felt the same in my veins, but it was more powerful than it used to be. I wasn't just a doppelgänger anymore. I was an Original vampire—or an Original hybrid. Then I became an Original tribrid, and with the power of the four witches that I had stolen before unlocking my werewolf gene, I had never had more magic in my life.

I honestly wondered if I'd ever have this much magic again, once it was all gone.

Tuning into the magic was easy, and in some ways, it seemed to amplify it. To have all of my focus on the power of it, in the place that it was meant to be, I felt limitless, like I could honestly do anything.

I drank Marcel's blood and closed my eyes. My hunch about some sort of connection spell, using Marcel's blood to link us, was right. Shea told me that it would link us in a way that I could get into his subconscious, that I could focus hard enough and see through his eyes. As I was the one initiating it, I was the only one who could get into his mind, but we would be connected physically, whatever that meant.

The spell Shea gave to me was meant to be done between two people in the same room, but with the excessive amount of power I had, Shea said the miles between Marcel and me wouldn't even matter.

I knew Kol would be watching me. He had warned me that he would stop this however he had to if there was any signs of something going wrong. Though he was willing to try to get Marcel out, for Klaus' sake, he didn't give a damn about him more than that, not enough to put me or the twins at any kind of risk.

I wondered if Klaus would agree. Rebekah mentioned that Marcel was like a son to him, which would explain the way she was tense when speaking about him. If she loved him, I didn't imagine Klaus allowed that kind of thing.

It was working, in a way I could feel. The foreign blood in me almost felt as if it was igniting within my own, allowing my blood and Marcel's to blend together.

In a flash, everything was different. It was a room, a rather small room. The French styling of the crown molding on the almost white walls didn't change the creepy aura in the room.

My vision was a bit blurry, but the more I tried to focus, the more sight came back. The room was empty, other than the man whose eyes I was seeing from.

I took a look at him, or at least at what held him down. Chains, strong ones, and I imagined his body was weakened. They probably had more vervain pumped into his body than was even remotely safe.

There were many different ways I might've gone about breaking the chains, but I tried something from here. I knew the spell to break the metal, and so I did it. Watching them snap, the shackles around his wrist, brought more pleasure than it should have, and he suddenly stood to his feet.

The world was wobbly, so I imagined that he was struggling at this point. Maybe if I had thought about it, I would've had Thierry leave a blood bag for whenever he woke up, but it was too late to take it back now.

Instead, I decided to tap into this connection more. I could use magic with this connection, so maybe I could let him borrow some of my strength.

It worked. He could walk across the room, could pull the door open with his bare hands. The snapping of the lock was loud, but at this point, it didn't matter all that much.

Just outside of the door was a narrow hall, with another prison cell across from the one he was in. There was only a single man out there, and I didn't have to make Marcel kill him. With one snap of his neck, he was dead, and I could see Marcel taking advantage of the corpse around him.

The more strength he had on his own, the better this might work.

Through the connection, I could feel it, the warmth and the power that came from the fresh blood. I didn't drink blood as often as I should have, mostly because Kol still struggled with his own blood lust. If I drank too much, he might do the same and get off track.

Control was necessary to ensure our kids didn't become what everyone else already decided that they were.

Marcel was guiding himself out, without much concern for his well-being. If it was as dire as Davina made it out to be, as dire as his weakened body showed, he probably welcomed death at this point.

The more he stumbled, out of the hall and through the dimly lit rooms of beneath the Abattoir, the more strength he seemed to have coming back. Eventually, his stumbling became steps, and that wasn't my own strength guiding him. It was his.

He pushed a heavy door open, and the sunlight through his eyes was blinding. It took a few seconds to adjust, but I recognized where he was in an instant. The main, very open entrance of the Abattoir, was around him. When Marcel had us over to talk, he had taken us through this very room but towards somewhere upstairs.

I wasn't the only one who noticed his appearance, though. The witches, scattered about the main entrance of the Abattoir, began to panic, and I could hear them calling for backup.

" _He's out! Come stop him!"_

Marcel stepped forward, ignoring their cries for backup, but he hesitated, just beneath the shadow of the floor above him. His eyes moved across his hands, towards the fingers absent of a ring.

Oh. He didn't have his daylight ring.

" _He can't leave. He doesn't have his ring."_

Marcel's eyes darted towards the sound of the woman's voice, and I recognized the face immediately. It was the same woman I had met the first time I had come to New Orleans, the same woman whose face I had scratched into the floor earlier.

I focused on the connection, focused on holding my hand out, and I watched his eyes stare at his hand, watched him awe at the sight of his skin not burning in the sunlight.

Hybrids didn't need daylight rings, which we had learned after I had already unleashed my werewolf curse. Even witch-vampire hybrids don't need them, but this connection Marcel and I had protected him from the sun, too—at least for now.

Once he was certain he wasn't going to burn, he stepped out further, and the panic arose around the room.

" _He's not burning!"_

I could feel it, the magic from around the room breaking through him and into his mind. It was explosive, very powerful and painful. Focusing became harder, but I had to think past it.

I couldn't siphon the spell away from him, but I had so much power, I could bring him back to his feet. On his feet, he was able to overcome the pain. One step at a time, he moved towards the closed gate of the entrance to the Abattoir.

Bones began snapping, Marcel's bones, but one wave of his hand, through moving my own, had the ground shaking around the witches casting this spell on him. No one seemed to die, but their concentration was broken. He had a clear escape.

He ripped open the metal gates of the Abattoir, and he took the first step towards his freedom. I could see his eyes wandering, his gaze trying to find answers, but all he found was Thierry, standing just down the block from him.

Marcel moved to him on instinct, but Thierry didn't give him a chance to reunite with him properly. He just opened the door to the SUV beside him to gesture him in, and just like that, the two were driving away, towards the only safe place we had made inside of New Orleans.

Maybe I should've seen them home, but I didn't. I ripped my own eyes open to bring my focus back to the room around me.

I never really could've guessed what I would find, though. I had known that this was a powerful spell, that the magic inside was beyond anything we knew how to control, but what I saw was something I had never seen before.

The candles, which had been in a perfect circle, had completely melted down and together, making an actual circle without a single break in the wax.

Whoa.

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry it's been so long! I promise I'm not giving up on this story. Life has just been very crazy, but I will try to do better. :)**

 **Read, review, and enjoy!**


	6. 05: Out of Control

"Once upon a different life,  
We rode our bikes into the sky,  
But now we call against the tide.  
Those distant days are flashing by.

Hold back the river. Let me look in your eyes.  
Hold back the river, so I  
Can stop for a minute and be by your side."

 _Hold Back the River_ : James Bay

* * *

We all sat around, pretty much just waiting for Marcel. Shea, Sutton, Oryn, Stefan, and Ayven all kept to themselves upstairs, with the plan currently set on keeping everyone out of the loop. Davina knew, but she couldn't talk about it, couldn't even remember whenever she wasn't in our presence. Thierry didn't know, and for now, it was gonna stay that way.

With us sitting and waiting, we heard the SUV pull up. The footsteps approached the front door, and Davina was there to pull it open.

Marcel grabbed onto her and hugged her the way I expected. They were clearly close, as Marcel had been so angry about the idea that we had killed her, that we had hurt her the way that we had.

Their reunion was cut short by the sight of us approaching. I guess he hadn't known much about what was going on, or maybe Thierry hadn't properly explained. I guess that made sense. I couldn't fully explain all that had happened myself.

How did I gain control of him that way? With enough focus, I could've made him do whatever I wanted.

There were tears in Davina's eyes when she pulled away and looked back towards the four of us. "I'm sorry, Marcel. I didn't know what else to do."

Marcel's focus moved between us all, but he seemed to linger longest on me. "What are you guys doing here?"

"You are family, Marcellus," Elijah answered without missing a beat. "When Davina came to us and said that you were in trouble—"

Elijah was cut off by Marcel's glare, moving to fully stare at me. "Trouble _you_ caused."

I took a deep breath. "Let's get over this already. I get it. I did bad and turned Davina into a vampire, thus making you lose control of your witches. You tried to lock us there for all of eternity. Now, can we move forward? You're welcome."

"What?"

"What?" I snorted. "Do you think you just walked out of there?"

His stare moved across me, not in a way that might imply he was trying to study the way I looked. Mostly, I think he was trying to understand my body language, the words I wasn't saying, and that probably came with the territory of ruling a city for over a hundred years.

Suddenly, he lifted his right hand, to stare at his fingers without a daylight ring, and I guess it clicked. "What did you do?"

"We were linked," I said. "We still are, at least until I get you a daylight ring made."

His hand fell back down, and he didn't waste a second finding me to stare again. "Wait, what?"

"I'm not a dick, Marcel." I crossed my arms and tried to just breathe normally, though I found it hard to not exhale sharply. "I didn't just turn Davina to make you pay."

Anger was back, burning in his eyes. "That's exactly what you did."

"That's exactly what I compelled you to know," I disagreed.

"I was on vervain," he said, but the words barely came out.

I rubbed my dry lips together. "Right, as Davina was when she came to ask for our help, and Thierry was when he showed up earlier today, yet I still have them doing whatever I need them to do."

If there was one thing I had learned, explanations required lots of talking and time, and time wasn't something I was willing to waste, not for this. We had come all this way to help, and it was time for us to go. Obviously precautions had to be taken to ensure they were safe until this Harvest stuff blew over, but once things were all set, I was ready to get out.

This wasn't the first daylight ring I had to make, so it was simple to do. With just a bit of focus, I started whispering the words under my breath.

The metal of the ring was warm, as I could feel the enchantment on the object beginning to work, but warm became hot quickly. Hot suddenly escalated into scorching, and in seconds, the ring in my hands just exploded into nothing.

"Fuck!"

"Before you took my magic, it was becoming out of control." Davina's heeled footsteps made their way across the room, until they brought her next to me. "You have to learn to control it."

I didn't watch my hands recover from the explosion, the burn of it and the shards of metal that had cut along the skin. "How do I do that?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "It was just starting to become a problem when you killed me."

What she was saying was registering in my mind, and it was something I had thought about. This wild, unpredictable magic had to be controlled, but the best place to do that, to learn the control I needed, was somewhere outside of here, a place where the power of New Orleans couldn't really get to me. I'd have a bit more to use elsewhere, but outside of New Orleans, it was just excess power.

Inside the borders, it was wildly dangerous, so the best thing I could see to do was get the hell out.

I slid my tongue around my lips and turned away from her, towards the rest of my family still lingering at the bottom of the stairs, near the front door of the house. "Oh well. Is everyone ready to go?"

"Go?" Davina repeated, as if the word was too complex for her to understand.

I knew I was being bitter, and probably a bit mean, but I had never actually been so afraid for my life. Klaus had come into our lives and threatened us almost daily, but I could feel safe because he valued my life, my sister's life. These witches didn't give a damn who I was, and if anything, they thought I was better off dead.

"Yeah," I said, barely even glancing her way. "Marcel's safe. The witches can't get to you here."

Marcel cleared his throat, I guess to catch my attention, and it worked. "Okay, look, I like you. You're spunky. You're clearly more powerful than I even wanna think about, but can you please explain to me what's going on? And where the hell is Klaus? What did you need the gold dagger for?"

"He'll tell you all about it, in twenty years or so." I shrugged. "Here's the deal. We came down here to save you. That's what I did. Now, the witches are still desperate, but by January, they will lose their power. When this happens, you can have your damn city back. There's a freezer downstairs full of blood bags for the three of you, and there are about a hundred small vials of hybrid blood to cure any werewolf bites you might get. If you're careful, it should be enough to last until January. The house is cloaked, so they won't be able to find you. Stay safe. Good seeing you again."

I saw Elijah's eyes tighten before I had even stopped talking, but he cleared his throat the moment my words stopped. "Darcy, hang on just a moment."

Marcel didn't even pay him attention, with his stare still on me, and I watched a huge grin come to his lips. "You stole Davina's Harvest magic, didn't you?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I did, so the quicker I get out of here, the better it will be for you."

His lips pursed, to fight the urge to smile wider, and he folded his arms across his chest. "Did you notice?"

"Notice what?"

"The witches," he said, as if it should've been obvious.

I didn't mean to freeze, as it was a sign of fear, but that's all this was, fear for my life. It might've been crazy, but I was afraid. "What?"

"They recognized the magic getting me out of there," he said. "They knew it was theirs."

Shaking my head wouldn't change what he was saying, but it was a reflex, my own body reacting to the words I didn't really wanna accept. "No."

"You don't have to believe me. Go ahead. Leave the city. That's what you guys do best, right?" Though he smiled, it was tight, and his eyes focused, narrowed. "You know, you do fit in well."

In an instant, Kol had Marcel in his hands, pressed back against the wall next to the door with his hand gripping his throat so tightly that Marcel was losing air.

Marcel wasn't the only one, though. I could feel it, and it took three seconds for a cough to start, for the absence of air to rip pain through my lungs up to my brain. Oxygen was absolutely necessary, and without it, even vampires felt the pain.

Kol knew what my coughing meant without looking at me, and he released Marcel the second he heard the sound.

"That's enough, Kol!" Rebekah exclaimed.

He didn't even acknowledge his sister, or his brother for that matter. He turned away from Marcel to stare at me, to watch me recover from the few moments without air, and the anger in his eyes softened.

Kol was angry, and because I had shared my own fears with him, he was scared too, but none of that showed when he let me see his eyes now. "What do you want to do, princess?"

I did my best to swallow, to fight a smile, but I absolutely couldn't. "You choose now to say that?"

His lips smiled too, but without the light in his eyes, it was just a shell of a smile. "I promised we could leave, and we can do that."

That was probably the best option, at least on the outside, but what did we really know about all of this? The hope had been that I could get Marcel out without anyone realizing what was happening, but of course they noticed. They could probably feel it.

I started chewing on my bottom lip and let my gaze wander back to Davina. "How desperate are we talking?"

"When they found out that I had a history with you guys, they got the grand idea to use me as leverage to bring you to town, so I'd say pretty desperate," Marcel answered for her, and Davina only nodded.

Kol's jaw stiffened, the muscles and bone working hard to remain locked, but he turned back towards Marcel. "What do they want with us?"

"You think they told me that?" Marcel asked. "Something you guys have, something you guys did? From what I gather, they need their Harvest complete before anything else. The rest doesn't matter to them right now. They're running out of time."

Something we had? Something we did?

They didn't say they wanted just a few Mikaelsons to come to town. They said _eight_ of them, and technicalities didn't matter. I wasn't officially a Mikaelson, but the witches had already grouped me with them. That part was fine, but the eight part . . . that had bothered me from the moment I heard it.

It all came back to that, and I couldn't breathe very well again. "We have to get out of here."

Kol turned around to watch me, to let me see him as we spoke, and I was thankful for that. Something about Kol made everything else seem better, even in the midst of a wild and dangerous storm. "Will that work? If they're so desperate, they'll find another way to bring us back, or they'll come to us."

"What can they do exactly? We're Original vampires." Rebekah was staring at her brother, but it was lost to him because he was so focused on me. "What am I missing?"

"We see the impossible every day, Bex," Kol reminded her, and I was thankful he wasn't making me say it to them. I felt stupid enough telling him, and I didn't wanna have to tell all of them, too. "What more is there out there that we know nothing about?"

"I'm a siphon," I said. "I take the magic from things, and I consume it. It goes away after time, but this magic is different. It's still there, and it's getting worse. I didn't even know that it was possible for my body to not consume the magic that I siphon. It always has. When we left New Orleans, it was weaker. It was harder to feel, but the second we got back, it was like I was coming apart from the inside out. I haven't felt anything like it since I triggered my curse."

"Hold up just a second." Marcel held a hand up in my direction, and that had Kol ready to kill instantly. "What is this about being a siphon? Let me see if I'm understanding this. You're a vampire, and somehow, you're a witch. You're also a werewolf?"

I slid my tongue across my lips, doing my best to focus on anyone else right now. "Yes. I'm the world's first tribrid. Not important."

"First?"

Just like that, I could feel my face tightening into a glare, and I sent it Marcel's way. "Leave it alone, Marcel."

"No." He rubbed his lips together and took a step, a demanding step, and his eyes moved away from me, to look towards Rebekah and Elijah. "I wanna know what the hell is going on. You guys show up after a century of running from your dad, and you show up bringing _that_ to town? Then, she kills the sixteen year old girl who was helping me keep the witches under control, and there's still a huge question that no one seems to be answering. What the hell did you need the gold dagger for?"

With Kol turned away from me, it was hard to see the way he stared at Marcel, but I watched his fists tighten into balls, whitening the skin of his hands. "Oh, you are testing me, Marcellus."

"It's Marcel," he corrected.

"Right." Kol's tone made it obvious enough that he didn't give a damn what he preferred to be called. "You see, my family likes you, and with you currently linked to the woman I'm in love with, I will not do anything to hurt you, but you are pushing your luck. I'm having a bit of a bad day."

"You're having a bad day?" Marcel scoffed. "I just spent a month locked up in a cellar while witches did whatever they damn well pleased to pick my brain apart! If I'm so important to you guys, if I'm your family, tell me what the hell is going on."

It was the reason we had come. We took a risk and brought ourselves to New Orleans to protect someone that Klaus saw as family, for Klaus' sake. He would've helped Marcel if he was alive to do it, so we had to do it for him, since he was currently dead for our children's sakes.

I didn't think much about what I was doing anymore, not with the reminder that this was Klaus' family, the man he raised like a son. I stepped closer, just past Kol, and took a deep breath. "I'm the world's first tribrid, but I'm not the last."

His eyes tightened, but it wasn't out of anger this time. "What?"

Kol reached out to grab onto my arm, but it wasn't a forceful action. He was simply trying to get my attention, to stop me. "Darcy."

I didn't listen, just pulled my arm out of his grip. "Klaus called you family, so you know what? You are. We needed the gold dagger because we needed someone to be daggered for the next, eh, seventeen years or so because there was a coven of witches coming for something that everyone in this family holds very dear."

I watched him soften with the truth I was giving him, with the agreement to his word family that I don't think he actually expected me to give. "What is that?"

"Mine and Kol's children."

His breath caught, forcing his mouth to fall open to attempt to get more air into his lungs, and his eyes grew wider than they had yet. This was the sort of response I expected from Kol's siblings, had I been there when they found out the truth. No one had really told me how that went, but I hadn't really cared to ask.

Surely they were shocked, probably didn't even believe it at first, but they did eventually learn to accept it. That was what mattered most.

Marcel's shock carried on into the mirthless laugh he gave, and he didn't have to say it. I knew what he was thinking without a single word.

I let out a long sigh and turned towards the stairs. "Can you bring them down here please?"

Footsteps from up the stairs, from the direction of the room we had sort of decided to put the twins in before we made the decision to leave town before the end of the day, clued me in that they were coming, so I didn't have to call again.

Marcel heard the steps, too, and the corners of his eyes tightened. He didn't say anything still, instead waited for whatever I was about to show him.

Believing things without proof was hard, and I absolutely had the proof.

It wasn't all that surprising that Oryn and Ayven were the two to bring the twins downstairs. Oryn held Theia, the one he was sired to, and Ayven held Alastor. Both had had two hybrids sired to them originally, but only Alastor still remained with two.

That would be enough, though. We would protect them both, with or without hybrids sired to them.

Marcel didn't have to look at both of them to believe what I was saying. One glance at Alastor was all he needed, and his head slowly shook. "How is this possible?"

"I don't know if we will ever have an answer to that, Marcel," Elijah admitted. "Niklaus gave himself to be daggered so that we could link the twins' lives to his own, to ensure that when this coven of witches coming for them died, they would not, not until they were ready to transition into vampires—if they so choose to do so."

He continued staring at the twins for a few more moments, but he suddenly looked back at me. "Okay. I'm starting to get it."

"Get what?"

"Your fire," he said. "It was all for your kids."

I nodded. "That's why I do anything."

The twins were far more interesting to look at, so that's where he stared again. The smile that came any time anyone saw the twins started growing across his lips. "I have a rule about kids. It's why I helped stop the Harvest ritual to begin with. You don't mess with kids."

"Well, unfortunately, not everyone shares that with you," Rebekah murmured. "We've already had to murder an entire coven, and I'm afraid we may have to take down nine more if this is any indication."

There was a moment, just a small flicker of light at the sound of Rebekah's voice, but it was the same thing I had seen in Rebekah, any time Marcel was mentioned. He didn't let the thoughts of Rebekah take over him long because he stared back at me. "What do you need me to do?"

"Not much," I said. "I have to find a way to get rid of this magic I've siphoned from the Harvest. Can you figure that out?"

"Not without walking right into certain death," he said. "Like I said, the witches recognized it. At this point, they know that it's not gone, and I'm sure they're gonna do something to figure out all the hows and the whys."

I began chewing on my lip again. "What if I left you linked to me? Could you get in there?"

His eyebrows rose. "I could do that, but the kids . . . that changes things. I really think you guys should get out of town."

"As soon as the witches of New Orleans get this magic back and won't follow, we'll leave," Rebekah assured him.

"We have to ensure they _don't_ , though," Kol spoke up again, for the first time since I had decided to tell Marcel the truth. The fact that he wasn't seething with rage made me feel a bit better about my choice. "Do you not remember, Elijah? The witches knew of the twins by the time we got to town the first time. Someone told them, and if I had to guess, it was the same someone who told the Gemini. They didn't stop until we killed them. If we can cut the witches off from their connection to magic, we won't have to kill them to keep them out of our way."

Elijah was focused, but it wasn't on anything or anyone in the room. It was probably the memory of our first trip to New Orleans, where we made the gold dagger, to the moment Kol was talking about.

He nodded. "We may have to run until January, Darcy, but I believe leaving New Orleans at once is the best course of action, for you and the twins."

I stepped over to Oryn and Ayven, grabbing Theia from Oryn's arms at once. "You're right."

Marcel watched me hold her, watched me smile at the sight of my daughter coming to life inside my arms. "You said this house was protected from the witches?"

"Well, it will be," I corrected. "I'm gonna put a spell as soon as we leave, ensuring no one can get in, and you will each be cloaked as well. No one, and I do mean no one, will be able to find you."

Kol did the same thing I did, reached over to grab Alastor from Ayven's arms, but he barely even looked Alastor's way when he did it. "Do I have to compel any of these people?"

My stomach fluttered with his words, a cool sensation sweeping through my body and pricking my skin with goosebumps. Kol Mikaelson just addressed Marcel like a human being?

Marcel and I weren't the only one surprised to hear him say this, hear him speak to him like a comrade, but I imagined it had something to do with what I had said earlier, about Klaus seeing him as family. With their relationship no longer the dark mess it had been before, Kol was willing to at least accept that his brother saw him as family.

"If there was anyone in the world I would trust, it would be these two," Marcel assured him.

Kol turned towards each other person in the room, towards the two he didn't really know and didn't trust any longer than his shadow. "Let me make myself very clear. There was a time in my life when I cared about nothing but blood and indulging in the darker parts of life. I am not that person anymore, but if anyone, and I do mean _anyone_ , hears of these two, I will become that person faster than you could even blink."

That was it, all the warning he gave either of them, and my eyes fully circled. Kol didn't turn back towards any of us, simply headed out the front door and towards the car. It was a bit of a dick move, to leave the rest of us to get all the bags, but I remembered the portable DVD player in the SUV with the car seats, with Mickey Mouse already inside. That was probably where Alastor and Theia would've rather been anyways.

I looked back to Theia, who was just watching her dad leave with her brother out the front door, and gave her the best smile I could. "I really fear for your future boyfriends, sweetheart."

Fuck, I hadn't even thought about that.

* * *

 **A/N: Let me know what you guys think! :)**


	7. 06: Border

"I will be different.  
I'm not sure if I can do it all alone.  
God, I want to be different,  
But I'm not sure if I can do it on my own.

'Cause every now and then,  
The darkness tries to chase me,  
And my legs are getting tired of running.  
No, no, no, no, please don't,  
Please don't let it get to me.  
Oh, I don't want to give up that easily."

 _Darkness Keeps Chasing Me_ : Grace VanderWaal

* * *

It was finally here. We were getting the hell out, and we were gonna stay on the road until January. Most importantly, the twins would be safe outside of the borders of New Orleans.

Our convoy was only two SUVs this time, but I preferred it that way. The less attention we drew to ourselves, the better.

Cloaking the people inside the house and putting a boundary spell on it was a success, and I accredit that to the spell being powerful. It took a lot of magic to put a boundary spell around an entire house, so because of that, I didn't use too much and accidentally explode the house.

Everything was peaceful. Ayven and Stefan were the only two riding with us, aside from the twins of course, and Ayven was currently in between the two seats the car seats were resting in. Most times, someone didn't sit between them, but even Mickey Mouse wasn't enough to take them away from the hunger in their stomachs.

She was feeding them their favorite snack, yogurt bites. Alastor liked the cherry vanilla kind best, whereas Theia was a big fan of the mixed berry. Right now, I think all we had left was the banana, but they didn't mind. They just loved yogurt bites.

I couldn't wait for them to fall asleep. It was past their usual bedtime, but with the life they had, there wasn't really a schedule for anything. All the parenting books and sites on the Internet told me I was doing it wrong, but they were alive. They were happy, and with the lives they were born into, that alone was a miracle.

Kol didn't even complain about the Mickey Mouse playing. I watched him grimace any time the Hotdog song played, but he accepted it because it kept them happy. Above all else, that's what he wanted: a happy and safe life for our kids.

The sign was in sight, the "You are now leaving New Orleans" sign that I had been anticipating, and just the sight of it alone had every muscle in my body relaxing, so much that I sank into the comfort of the soft leather seats and closed my eyes.

Everything changed in a single moment.

With my eyes closed, I didn't know what made the car crash, but I knew the sound. It was unmistakable, a sound you didn't have to see to know what it was.

The metal crunching was all I could hear for a single moment that felt like a year, but then it was glass, shattering. I waited for the airbags to deploy, but they never did.

Adrenaline pulsed through me, and my eyes opened, an attempt to see what might have caused this.

There was nothing. It was just the front end of the SUV, smashed beyond repair, and the "You are now leaving New Orleans" sign just beside me.

The sound of loud cries of pain snapped my neck back towards the two car seats, the seats that held the only two living beings in the car.

I tried to turn, but something held me back. It was easy to ignore the pain when every part of me was on high alert, pulsing with adrenaline, but there was a shard, in my stomach. It wasn't just in my stomach, but it went all the way through, pinning me into the seat behind me.

Kol seemed to notice it before I did, and the hands that came over to rip the glass from my body were bloody. I didn't know why, but I didn't worry too much. A bit of glass wouldn't take _us_ out.

With the shard from my stomach, I was free to turn back, and what I saw . . . fuck, I was gonna hug the shit out of Ayven later. The twins were screaming, but there wasn't even the tiniest cut on them. I could've said it was their vampire healing, but the unconscious, bloodied body of Ayven told me otherwise.

She had used herself to shield them from the glass. Not just Alastor, but Theia, too.

The side doors to the SUV were ripped open, almost in perfect unison. Sutton was on the side Alastor sat in, with Oryn ripping open Theia's door, and the two of them began getting the twins out.

I had seen a lot of different things from Kol, pain of a degree I never imagined he had felt before, anger that boiled through him so powerfully that it burned his skin, and I had seen him afraid. It took a lot to actually make Kol afraid, but I had seen it a few times.

This was something else entirely. This went beyond fear.

What had happened? There was nothing there. Why had we crashed?

Kol kicked his door in, and that snapped me out of my thoughts. Right now, what happened didn't matter. We needed to get somewhere safe to reevaluate, to figure out a new plan to get out.

The cries of the twins began to fade, and I knew why. They knew who their family was, who was going to protect them, so in Sutton and Oryn's arms, they could find peace, just as much as they could in Kol's or mine.

Stefan, despite the blood running down his own arms, pulled Ayven from the car, and he laid her on the ground. Shea came to take Theia from Oryn, giving him a chance to help Stefan with his sister.

If she wasn't a vampire, she would've died. There was so much glass in her body, making it hard to see anything but a bloodied mess of what used to be a person. With the glass out, the wounds would heal, and she would wake up soon enough.

The SUV Elijah had been driving was barely a few inches from the back bumper of the one Kol had been, but I was thankful one vehicle was intact. It was a way to get somewhere safe anyways, at least until we knew what was happening.

Kol hadn't hit anything, so why did the car crash?

Rebekah was the first to approach me, fear hardening her own eyes. "What the hell just happened?"

"I don't know." The words barely came out, but I knew she heard them, being an Original vampire and all.

"I don't know what happened! It was like I hit a wall!"

I didn't know who Kol was talking to, but it didn't matter. It was an answer to a question I hadn't gotten a chance to ask him, and it didn't settle well inside.

Everything in my stomach knotted, and I wondered if vampires could throw up. It felt like I was about to, and I couldn't breathe.

My legs took me somewhere before my mind caught up with them, but I found myself standing next to the crashed SUV, almost perfectly aligned with the sign. It would just take a single step.

I reached my hand out instead, and I felt it. It was like a wall . . . that you couldn't see, and I knew what that was. There was magic involved, magic that I could just siphon away. No big deal. The witches didn't know how it was that I had magic as a vampire.

I pressed my hand against it, and I focused on the warmth.

There was no warmth.

It was . . . it was just a wall.

No.

Every thought in my head was spinning, coming to the forefront of my brain at the same time, and I couldn't stop it. The thoughts racing picked up the speed of my breaths, until I was nothing but a hyperventilating mess. I could feel each heavy beat racing, pounding against the bones of my ribcage, and I couldn't stop it, couldn't swallow. If I wasn't a vampire, I might've been afraid it would kill me.

Something was gonna me, though. I couldn't leave New Orleans.

"I can't leave."

I didn't have to see Kol move next to me to know he was the one who wrapped his arms around me, and his own breaths were heavy. "Just breathe, baby. Everything will be okay."

All I could do in response was shake my head, but shaking my head seemed to trigger something else inside, the anger and frustration at the situation that I hadn't noticed because of the overwhelming fear. "I can't leave!"

Kol just held me closer, and against him, I could feel as he turned his head away, towards someone around us. "Rebekah, you need to take the twins and get the hell out of here."

"Like hell we will." Her words were choked with tears, but they were fierce. "We're not leaving you two here to face whatever's to come!"

"You don't have a choice!" Kol exclaimed. "You have to get them out!"

"We'll take them!" Shea insisted. "We'll get them somewhere safe. You guys just stay here and protect Darcy."

Kol didn't let me go, but his grip loosened. We had had this talk before, how he didn't trust people. Most days before all of the stuff happened with the twins, he didn't even trust his family, so trust was hard to earn from Kol.

The hybrids sired to our kids, the Gemini twins who had saved me and saved the twins, had earned his trust. If there was anyone in the world he would trust with the twins besides his family, it was them, even more so than my family. He knew Elena wouldn't let anything happen to them, but the hybrids and the Gemini twins were a bit more experienced in the ways of surviving, in the protection the twins desperately needed.

A soft breath passed through his lips, and he nodded. "Okay. If you go towards Virginia, tell Elena not to worry. Make sure no one comes for us. We'll survive this until January, and that will be that. Just keep them away, and keep the twins safe." He had to take a deep breath. "You should go now. Hold them until morning, until you can safely stop and get new car seats."

"I'm afraid that's not possible."

The voice that called out was unfamiliar, and with all the vampires we had around us, I really didn't know how we missed it. There was someone else here, multiple someones.

With our attention now drawn to them, they stepped out from the forest around the road, stepped out from behind the SUV still intact, and I counted fifteen.

It didn't take a rocket scientist to know that these were the witches of New Orleans, or some of them anyways. I didn't have to see the two familiar faces to know either—both the woman who had once told me to my face that they had no quarrel with me or my twins and the woman whose face I had scratched into the wooden floors.

I could feel my pulse racing, feel every single nerve inside my body ice over, but I couldn't let them see that. There was no denying that I was afraid, terrified, but I had to look them in the eye and let them see someone who was more than that.

They needed to see the mother in me, right now.

At the sight of Jane-Anne, however, Kol acted, and he moved my body back behind him. "What the hell is going on?"

"No one is leaving New Orleans until we get our magic back," she said, getting straight to the point of it all.

"Why?" I asked, and I stepped back around Kol, to ensure no one got the idea that I would just cower behind Kol and let him take care of things. "So you can kill my kids?"

Jane-Anne's eyes softened, but I knew better than to believe anything any of these witches said. Even when she shook her head, I didn't believe her. "You don't understand. I lost my daughter to this ritual."

"Then you should understand what I'm trying to do," I said. "Let my kids leave, and you can have your stupid magic back to do your stupid Harvest ritual!"

"It's not that simple."

Vampirism had many positive effects. There was a growing list of negative, but it was still very easy to remain positive about it all. The speed was just fun, but it came in handy more times than I realized.

In a second, I was in front of Jane-Anne, and my eyes tightened. From the way she shrunk back, I wondered if they were darkening, too. "Is it not? Seems pretty simple to me."

"We just want to complete the Harvest, get our kids back." Tears began falling down her cheeks, but they didn't soften anything inside. If anything, seeing her cry now only stirred the pot of anger, bringing it to an explosive boil. "My daughter."

"Don't play the sad mother card," I snapped. "You chose to let your daughter be a part of that."

"If Marcel hadn't come and messed everything up, she would've come back," she insisted. "When he took Davina, he took everything."

"Then don't sit here and pretend to understand what I'm going through." I folded my arms over my chest. "You're not talking about killing my daughter and my son and then them magically coming back. You want them here so they die and never come back, so burn in hell."

"I am." She cleared her throat and wiped away the tears, which was probably in her best interests. "I am living in hell every day."

She really didn't get it, did she? It was obvious to anyone with working eyes that I would stop at nothing to protect my children, and she was really gonna play that up? Play the mother who lost a child card when I knew the whole story?

I would _never_ give my daughter to that ritual, no matter what the costs. It didn't matter if she was gonna come back. She was sacrificing a life that wasn't her own, a life that she was supposed to protect _with_ her own.

Instead, she let her be sacrificed so they could keep their magic.

The inside of my ears was pounding, and the magic only amplified the adrenaline as it began coursing through my veins. I didn't think about what I did next, just turned to look at every witch gathered around, thinking they were safe because they outnumbered us.

One wave of my hand was all it took to bring every last one of them to their knees, screaming out in pain. I knew what the blood trickling from their noses meant, but I didn't care. I wanted them to feel this pain until they understood exactly what I would do to ensure they never touched a hair on either of my children's head.

A hand reached out to stop me, however, and I couldn't even begin to try and figure out who it was. "Darcy."

The anger just burst out, and in a second, the person touching me fell to his knees.

Kol fell to his knees.

Tears were falling before the pain even registered in my mind, in my heart. I dropped down in front of him and put a hand on his face, one that he didn't shy away from, despite the fact that I had just hurt him. "Kol, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

It hurt. There was so much magic, it was a wonder his brain didn't actually explode, but he still managed to smile at me. "Breathe, love. Just take a deep breath and calm down. Let's see why they're here."

"You know why we're here."

I recognized the voice of the woman who had lied to me my first time in New Orleans. I knew who it was that had spoken without seeing her lips move, and when I stood up, I hoped she saw the rage inside, at least a little bit. "Why are my kids here? Didn't you tell me that you had no quarrel with them?"

"Look at what you are," she said, but I had never seen so much darkness inside of someone, not even Joshua Parker as he looked me in the eye and told me that I shouldn't exist, that siphons were an abomination. "You're an uncontrollable monster, and they will be no different."

"They're _innocent_ ," I said, but the words were seething off my tongue, like fire rippling out at her. "They're not even a year old yet!"

A woman standing next to Jane-Anne, with features similar enough to know they were sisters, stepped forward, holding her hands out towards me. "We're not here to kill your children, alright? We just want to bring my niece back. I know you don't know me, and you have no reason to believe me, but we won't hurt your kids. We just want to bring our families back."

"You say as everyone else around you talks about murdering them." I didn't mean to glare because, despite the overwhelming numbers against her, I _did_ believe she meant it for herself. "Excuse me if I have trouble believing you."

There were many different ways this could've gone down, some with lots of violence and maybe some without, but there was only one clear path. They had to understand that I wasn't just talking, that I wasn't putting on a face. They needed to know that there were consequences to the path they had chosen.

One twist of my wrist was all it took to kill the woman who we had first met in New Orleans. I didn't know her name, and with any luck, I didn't have to know her name. It made what I had done to the Gemini a bit easier, despite my minds attempts to humanize the hundreds that I didn't know.

The fourteen witches that remained began to cry and panic, to gather towards the woman's dead body, but Jane-Anne and her sister stood their ground. With tears in their eyes, almost perfectly covering the fear, they stood firm.

I rubbed my lips together and folded my arms over my chest again. "Let me make myself very clear. We're clearly stuck here until January, until you guys all lose your magic and no longer have the power to keep us here. That's fine. I wanted to explore New Orleans a bit, but if I see any of you within a hundred yards of my kids again, I won't hesitate to do the same to you. Got it?"

"I just want my daughter back!" Jane-Anne's cries were desperate, and I could feel it in my heart, the twinge of pain that came with being a mother afraid to lose my kids. "Please!"

To hold back the tears, I had to remind myself that she made this choice. "You made the choice to put your coven before all else, very much like the Gemini have always done. That got them dead, and you get to live with your choices. Was it worth it? You all get to live with the reminder that there are things in this world more important than magic. Hell, I'd find a way to help you keep yours if I didn't know you were gonna use it to take two innocent souls from the world, but there is nothing you can do to convince me that I'm wrong. Because I'm not."

"You're a monster," she whispered, but tears just kept falling.

I shrugged. "If that what you wanna call me, fine. Call me a monster. Call me the Devil. I don't fucking care. What I am is a mother who will stop at nothing to protect my kids. You made the choice to give yours up. Justify it however you want, but it was a risk, and you knew that. You did it anyway, so now you can live with that. I'm gonna live happily, not give a shit what you think about me or what you think I am. I'm a mom who hasn't gotten the chance to sit down and watch my kids grow up because people like you are so insistent on ensuring they don't."

I stepped back from the two now, just to get a view of my family around me. The rest of the witches were hurt and angry, but they didn't dare try and attack. Right now, they all seemed more concerned with the dead woman, and that was exactly the way it needed to be.

The twins were asleep in the arms of Shea and Sutton, and how they managed to fall asleep, in the middle of all of this . . . the smile that formed was genuine, even if it wasn't much of one.

I gestured to the SUV still running, still intact, and Oryn didn't miss a beat opening the door for them to climb in. It would be a squeeze, but it wasn't for long. Just to get back to the Plantation.

"You can't hide in the Plantation." Jane-Anne's words were choked with tears, but I didn't let it get to me. "We know where you are."

"Great." I spun on my toes to face her, and I gave her the best fake smile I could. "Send a welcome to the neighborhood basket, but I don't recommend bringing it yourself. If I see any of you within a hundred yards of my kids, I won't hesitate. Breaking that woman's neck was as easy as breathing, and it won't be any harder to do it to any of you."

Hearing me say that got the attention of the witches around us, but I wasn't really in the mood to hurt anyone else. I hadn't been in the mood to hurt _anyone_ , but what other choice was there?

A million other choices . . . yet I chose to kill someone.

What the hell was happening to me?

Before the witches could get the idea to hurt anyone, I cloaked every last one of us, along with the SUV. Cloaking the SUV wasn't permanent, as it was dangerous to drive with a vehicle no one else could see, but I'd keep it cloaked until we were out of their sight anyways.

They were so confused, and maybe in another situation, I might've laughed, but all I could do was cry. All I could do was face what I had just done, and I didn't want to.

Killing the Gemini was necessary. They were trying to send the twins to a Prison World, but did that woman have to die?

It was a show of power, but why did I have to show my power? They got the hint when I made their noses bleed, right?

"Let's get back home," I managed to get out, and I let out a heavy breath. I didn't really wanna look at anyone right now, especially not face what I had done, so I had no plans to.

"Darcy."

I turned back to Kol, shaking my head. "Let's just get back to the Plantation. We'll figure out the rest from there."

He hated every single moment of this, and why wouldn't he? The reason he had stopped me from hurting all the witches was because he knew this magic was out of control. How long would it have taken for me to hurt them too much and kill them? A few more seconds?

This had been thought out, deliberate, and that . . . I just had to remember that this was the choice I made. The bodies could pile up, and I would deal with them later, when it was safe to deal.

There were almost enough seats for everyone, as long as Sutton and Shea continued holding Theia and Alastor, but two would have to squeeze in. With Ayven still unconscious, with the twins fast asleep, I wasn't gonna do that.

Instead, I opened up the back and climbed in, and Kol didn't waste a moment. He climbed in behind me, and a little magic was all it took to pull it shut.

I didn't care how cramped it was back here. I planned to spend the entire ride curled into a ball anyways.

Kol didn't just leave me to my ball of sadness, though, and it had been stupid to think he might. His arms reached out to grab me, to bring me close to him, and I couldn't help it. I just began to cry, the silent sobs hurting more than they might have if I had been able to let them sound.

My chest shook, ached with the pain that followed my brash decision, and all I wanted to do was hide away. If we dug a hole and hid in there until January, all of this would pass, right?

Who was I anymore?

* * *

 **A/N: I've never been that great at car crashes, so I hope this turned out alright!**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	8. 07: Lost

"There goes my hands shaking,  
And you are the reason  
My heart keeps bleeding.  
I need you now.

If I could turn back the clock,  
I'd make sure the light defeated the dark.  
I'd spend every hour, of every day  
Keeping you safe.

And I'd climb every mountain  
And swim every ocean,  
Just to be with you. . .

. . . I need you to see  
That you are the reason . . .

. . . I'm a little sad  
I need you to hold me tonight."

 _You Are the Reason_ : Calum Scott

* * *

Marcel, Davina, and Thierry had so many questions, and we answered them to the best of our ability. We couldn't leave, and that was what mattered tonight. The rest could wait until morning.

I ensured the spell was up before we went to bed, to make sure nothing happened because we dared to sleep without preparing. They wouldn't get to me, or my kids. I would see to that personally.

I wasn't sure what to make of Shea and Sutton approaching me, before I could even leave the room we quickly set up for the twins to sleep in. We'd have to buy beds soon, but for tonight, their two pack'n'plays would suffice.

"Darcy." Shea stepped closer, placing both of her hands on my shoulders. "Sleep tonight, okay? There's a long and crazy road ahead, and I'm sure you'll be at the head of it all. If the twins wake up in the middle of the night, we've got it, okay? You just sleep."

I . . . I knew it was wrong. I knew that I should've protested, insisted that they were my kids and my responsibility, but I couldn't find the words. Actually, I couldn't find any words, so I turned my teary eyed stare down to my feet and simply nodded.

Shea's hands fell from my shoulders the second someone else came into the room, and I didn't have to turn to know who stood in the doorway. Kol didn't like going to bed without at least telling the twins goodnight, whether they were awake to hear it or not.

His arms slid down my shoulders, wrapping around me to pull me against him. "Come on, love."

I sighed and put a hand on his arm, letting my gaze move back to the two standing in front of me. "Thank you."

Sutton gave me the best smile he could, but he knew as much as anyone else how hard this had been on me. He and Shea were the ones I talked to the most about everything, after I killed the Gemini, and I found out that he had killed two people the night he became a hybrid. He hadn't meant to, but he couldn't stop. Maisyn didn't have any trouble at all, but he _had_. That guilt carried with him, and Shea had killed her sister. Of course she was traumatized by that. It didn't matter that her sister would've died in a few more minutes anyway. _She_ killed her.

Their sympathetic smiles didn't irritate me at least, so with a half-hearted smile given back, I turned and started pulling Kol out of the room behind me.

We had some of the best people in the world behind us.

Kol followed me into the room without a word, and he didn't even question it when I walked across the room and started burning the sage, whispering the privacy spell under my breath.

I sat the burning herbs on the table and cleared my throat. "Bex?"

Her name was said loudly enough that if the spell wasn't working, she would've heard it for sure, so when she didn't come into our room, I was convinced.

I was across the room with my lips against Kol's in a second, and he was quick to kiss me back. It was a lot more intense than I expected it to be, with all that had gone on, but Kol wasn't holding back just yet.

One hand rested against my face, and the other crushed my body into him. It was amazing, the fervor of his lips against mine. It was as if the world around us didn't even exist, for this one moment in time.

Moment was an accurate way to describe it because Kol pulled away from me suddenly, his usually warm eyes tightened with pain.

"You don't need to do this, love."

"No, actually, I do." I didn't give him a chance to argue with me, however, because I didn't wanna fight. I just wanted to love, in the best way we knew how, so I kissed him.

To further prove my desire to let go of all the bad, I started sliding out of my jacket with my lips still on his. He actually helped me out of it, and the warmth of our passion burned through me, igniting every nerve and bringing all of me to life. It was moments like this that made it easy to forget that I was technically dead.

His arms wrapped around my waist, but he didn't use his hold on my hips to pull me closer. Instead, he used it to pull me away, and despite the fire inside trying to melt away the pain, he still looked down at me as if I was broken.

I shook my head. "Seriously, Kol. I was thinking about what I had done the entire ride back, and I don't wanna think anymore. I just need this. I-I need you."

A breath passed through his lips, but I saw his fight dissolving. With it put in words he could understand, he slid out of his own jacket. He leaned in to kiss me, but before his lips could grab onto mine, I slid his shirt above his head.

These were the moments in my life that would make every miserable part of eternity so worth it. Moments with Kol, moments with the twins or the rest of our family, they would get me through the hard times.

Right now, what I needed to get through the hard times was the best piece of good I could get, this connection and intimacy with Kol that still somehow hadn't lost its luster.

By the time we stumbled back to the bed, I was in nothing but my underwear. I didn't fall back onto the bed just yet, not until my fingers moved to slide his pants down from his body, ripping the boxer-briefs underneath down with them.

Kol used his hand to press my shoulders back against the bed, and his lips moved along my body. Kissing, nibbling, I was arching into him with little effort, and it wasn't just because I was horny, in dire need of him. His lips were soft against my skin, dancing across with a delicacy that only someone who loved someone could do.

There was fucking, and there was making love. Some people argued that making love required planning and extra romance, but I didn't believe that. I wasn't gonna say that Kol and I never fucked because we absolutely did, but tender moments like this one . . . it sometimes took me back to the beginning.

We went on our first date, and I had prepared for just about any ending. Good, bad, and anything in between. I prepared to go home with him, to sleep with him, but I also prepared to never talk to him again.

It was so much more than anything I could've hoped for, and it wasn't because Kol took me skydiving, or because he took me on an expensive and wild date. We didn't fly to Paris and see the Eiffel Tower lit up, but we went to dinner at an Italian restaurant, and he took me to an art show. To end the evening, or what he planned to end the evening, we just looked over Richmond from a higher up view. We talked, and that was something that even an Original vampire couldn't fake.

Romantic gestures were easy, but actual chemistry and romance were real. We had sex that night, and I didn't regret a single moment of it because that night, it was something more than fucking. It was two soulmates finding one another and experiencing the passion for the first time, and from that point on, everything was different. We fucked rarely, but we made love so many times that Kol was actually blown away. He once mumbled that he wasn't one to make love as he continued to hold me gently, to kiss along my stomach as he slowly moved inside of me.

This was making love in its purest form. His lips caressing my skin, his hands holding me more delicately than he had to since I wasn't breakable anymore, it was everything I needed.

I knew that I just needed to clear my head and connect with Kol, but I had no idea what it would actually do. Maybe I should've known, as it was the way we connected with each other, but I didn't realize that making love to Kol would bring out the worst things inside right now.

My stomach was in knots, and that was just the beginning. The pain resonating through me had my heart clenching up so tightly, it almost felt like someone's hands had actually gotten through and started squeezing. I had never felt the pain of someone sticking their hand into my chest, but I wondered if this was what it felt like.

As Kol recovered, as he pulled his body off of mine, his eyes connected with the tears spilling down my face, and he reacted immediately. Even the hug he drew me into was loving, though it was tight enough that I felt safe, and I knew that Kol was going to be right here every step of the way.

He loved me, and he was gonna protect me as best he could.

"Everything will be okay, love," he whispered, and his lips pressed against my shoulder. "You will get through this. It's not going to be easy, but you'll get through it. Just remind yourself what you keep telling me. Everything you do is for the twins."

"How can I do that?" I asked, the words having to push past a lump growing in my throat. "They weren't threatening them right now."

He scoffed. "Because they knew better."

"I could've just warned them," I disagreed. "Why did I have to kill her?"

"Words mean nothing, Darcy. I would've believed you, but they wouldn't." He leaned back away from me, just far enough that his lips could touch against my forehead. First my forehead, then they moved down to press against my cheek, making a soft and adorable circle around to the other. "I know you hate what you did, but you did what you had to do."

I wanted to hate the way he made the inside of my chest feel warm, the damn zoo he set free inside my fluttering stomach, but I couldn't. Even though I probably needed to suffer through the pain, it was fading, fast, and Kol was entirely to blame for that.

"There was no magic at the border," I said, an attempt to get back to the pain of it all by reminding myself of that moment of fear. "I couldn't siphon it."

"I assumed as much." His warm breath flushed across my skin, awakening the nerves beneath my cheeks until the surge of it all rushed to my lips. The skin tingled in anticipation, waiting for his to touch mine, but he pressed his lips against my forehead again instead. "We can look for something to do to get out sooner, but from the looks of it, we're stuck here until January. The twins will remain here. We won't let anything happen to them, and I promise that you will not be the only one to take down these witches to ensure that nothing happens to them. They won't get to the twins, and they won't get to you."

The fresh trails of water left behind by new tears left a weird, almost sticky feeling, the wet covering the dry. "Kol, I'm scared."

"Baby, there's nothing to be scared of," he breathed, and he pulled himself further away, just so his eyes could stare into mine. There was so much love and warmth that it was hard to not let myself be consumed by it all. "I promise. Nothing is going to happen to you."

"What if it already has?"

A line formed between his brows. "What?"

I closed my eyes for a few moments, to take in a heavy breath. Collecting my thoughts was best, and I needed to tell him what I had thought about earlier, when we were in the kitchen. "You were saying earlier that you love me because I was a smartass, because there was so much light and good in me. What if that's already fading?"

"It's not," he said.

"How can you say that?" I asked. "I-I killed hundreds, maybe thousands of people, and I didn't even blink when I killed that woman tonight."

He grabbed onto my face this time, to force my gaze into his own, and he shook his head. "Darcy, it's not gone."

"How do you know?"

His thumbs brushed across my cheeks, to remove the tears I hadn't even realized started falling again before they could roll all the way down. "Because I see it every day. I see you refusing to let my sister compel people to bring our bags in for us because that wasn't good human decency. You work so hard to protect the people around you, people you don't even know, as long as they're not trying to hurt your children or you, for that matter."

"What if . . . what if it all eventually goes away?" It was a dismal thing to think about, but I couldn't shake the thought. "What if I'm not the good, sweet Darcy that you know and love? What if centuries down the road I become this monster?"

One side of his mouth turned up, almost like he would smile in another situation. "You mean you become us?"

My face flushed. "I-I didn't say that."

"No, I get it," he assured me. "We did become monsters. We _are_ monsters, but do you want to know something? If that is the woman you become, I'll still love you. I'll just love the darker parts of you, the parts that you may be afraid of. I'm not. If you become a monster, love, I will have no reason not to be a monster with you. See, the light in you gives me reason to want to be something more than horrible, to want to be better than I once was, but if that's gone, hell, I'll have fun with it. We'll have fun with it. It will be okay."

My eyes rounded. "Yeah, all the more reason to never lose who I am."

He just laughed in response, letting his body sink against mine as his grip around me tightened, crushing me into his body in the best of ways. "Everything's going to be fine, Darcy. I promise."

I snorted. "Yeah, well, the last promise you made me, you've already broken, so."

"What?"

"You told me that we would get out of New Orleans by tonight, that we wouldn't even unpack," I reminded him.

Though his smile grew, he rolled his eyes. "Yes, well, that was before the witches put a magical border around the town that we couldn't get through, one that you can't siphon away."

The reminder ripped a groan through me, but I didn't let my thoughts stay focused on the fear, not right now. "I don't wanna kill anyone else."

"You won't have to," he said. "I'll do it for you."

"You can't keep doing that. Not anymore." I took a deep breath. "The night I killed the Gemini, the only thing that kept me sane was remembering why I had done it. I told myself that I would be able to go back to the Darcy I once was, the one that Klaus made fun of for being too soft to survive, as soon as the twins were vampires, or whenever they had lived the lives they wanted. If bodies had to pile up between the present and that future, I told myself I could face it."

"Can you?"

"I can." The smile growing on my lips was genuine, even if guilt churned through me at its formation. "As long as you help me."

"I will be right here, love." He leaned down to kiss my shoulder again. "Every step of the way."

How had people not noticed the person inside before? How had someone missed the man that Kol Mikaelson was?

Stunning looks aside, he was just so . . . warm. That was probably a strange word to use with an Original vampire who had killed more people than I could even understand, and I had killed hundreds, if not thousands at this point.

All it took was someone who saw the man inside, who saw past the darkness that had taken over. Kol was able to come out, and I loved him so much for who he was. Good and bad, the light and dark, I loved every piece of him, and I didn't imagine I could've gotten through all of this with anyone else.

Would anyone else have gotten me the way that he did?

"I love you."

"As I love you," he murmured. "And I will always love you, whether you're the dark Darcy who doesn't value life at all or the soft Darcy who values every life more than her own. It won't change how I feel about you."

My eyebrows rose. "How can you know that?"

"You are my soulmate, the one that makes me feel alive in ways that I know that no one else could," he said, and maybe the answer should've been obvious. "I felt it from the moment I saw you, and it took me a thousand years to find you, to find that peace that came with falling in love with you. I could live forever and never find that again, and I wouldn't want to. You, Darcy Gilbert, are all that I want, and one day in the near future, I will make you Darcy Mikaelson."

This was a conversation I could enjoy having, the one talking about us and our life and our future. "I got lucky. I found my soulmate at eighteen."

"Mmm." His lips pressed against my shoulder, but they didn't stop there this time. Instead, they fell, making a soft but blazing trail down my arm, all the way down to my hand. It wasn't a coincidence that he had kissed down my left arm, as he kissed just above the ring on my finger before he stopped.

My eyes closed, to fully take in the rush of this intimacy. "You know what I wanna do?"

His lips were like the smoothest velvet on my skin, like the best intoxication, and the parts of me that came to life with only Kol's touch were awakening again, loosening for another round of the sweetest bliss. "What is that?"

Flipping him back over onto his back was easy at this point, and Kol had stopped fighting the slight edge I had, as far as strength went. In a lot of ways, he was still stronger than me, but pure strength, the werewolf in me gave me an edge, one that he _thoroughly_ enjoyed after he just learned to accept it.

My lips moved down the muscles of his chest, and I flicked my tongue out across the ridges of his abdomen. "I wanna stay up all night."

He could barely breathe at this point, and his head tilted back, into the pillows. "No."

I scraped my teeth against the skin before circling his belly button with my tongue. "Why?"

He let out a soft breath. "I would love to stay up all night enjoying the perfection of your body, and I've proven that many times. I don't imagine I will ever not want that, but right now, we need our rest. Tomorrow, we'll figure things out. We'll find out if there's a way to get out of town, and if there's not, we'll figure out how to further fortify this home, to ensure no witches get to the twins or you. The threat is more imminent right now, and I can't ignore it. I won't ignore it, not for one night of selfish bliss. Not when it could mean something bad could happen to the twins, to _you_. I can't handle that thought, Darcy. I won't let them hurt you."

"Or the twins," I added on, though it was a bit unnecessary.

"Of course." A smile formed on his lips, especially as I reached down to grab onto one of his hands. Lacing my fingers in his, intertwining our hands this way, it could usually melt anything bad away, but there was something in his eyes, in his thoughts, that couldn't be ignored. "I-I feel as if the way I feel is wrong."

I rubbed my thumb across the length of his. "What do you mean?"

He hesitated a moment, taking in a large breath of air. "I don't want to live in a world without the twins, but I can't live in a world without you."

Oh.

 _Oh_.

This was guilt, and it was the worst kind of guilt. Sometimes, it was easy to make guilt go away. Justifying the things done, finding reasons that the bad had to happen, guilt could be eased.

This guilt was different. This was personal thoughts and feelings on a matter, and it was a delicate subject at that. Who was supposed to come first in a relationship?

There were a lot of different opinions on the matter. Obviously, in some ways, the kids definitely came first. As far as needs were concerned, it was important that the kids were taken care of above all else, but then there was the other aspect of it all.

Grayson and Miranda were perfect examples of the way I felt about it, the way I was _raised_ to see things. Above all else, there was the spouse, who would be there long after the kids were gone—that was the idea anyways, of the vow to love one another forever. Life didn't always work out that way, but in theory, marriages lasted until death does a couple part.

In so many ways, Kol and I were everything I had always wanted, without really thinking much about what I wanted in life. To hear his thoughts mirrored mine in a way, I hated that he felt guilty about it.

There was nothing to feel guilty about. It wasn't like we would ever ignore our kids or abandon them for the sake of one another.

There was a line between everything, one we would never cross. Our kids would grow up happy and loved, and they would make it to eighteen, one way or another. That didn't mean we had to ignore one another along the way, to let either one of us feel alone or abandoned.

Life was all about lines and boundaries, compromises and choices, but absolutely none of those things would require me to choose Kol over my kids, or vice versa. I really couldn't say how I might choose because if I chose the twins, I would die. The choice to live in a world without Kol didn't really exist, but I could see us choosing to die together, if it meant the twins had a chance to live their lives.

But it wouldn't happen. There would never be a point when I would have to decide, or vice versa. We would all live our lives, eternally. Or maybe the twins would choose to grow old and die, but that would be their choice to make.

We were going to give them a chance to make that choice, together.

"Kol—"

"I know that might sound wrong, but I can't shake the thought that I would rather die than be without you," he whispered.

"That's not wrong." My hand moved to touch his face, my fingers spreading to cover as much of the surface of his skin as I possibly could. "I actually can't be alive in a world without you, so you've kinda made it where you have to die for me to."

"There are other ways I might—"

"Look at you, being crazy again," I interrupted, letting my smile twist into a smirk. "You think I'll meet someone else? Soulmates aren't a one sided thing, baby. But back to what you were saying . . . before there was the twins, there was us."

He nodded. "And now there is the four of us."

"Right, and we won't let anything happen to any of the four of us," I said.

"No, never."

I rubbed my lips together. "But one day, there will be only us again."

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"One day, they'll have lives of their own," I said. "They'll go out, see the world, fall in love . . . they'll have their own happy lives. There will just be us."

Hearing me say this, agree with the thoughts that made him feel guilty, I watched it all disappear as a smile grew onto his lips, brightening all the already perfect features of his face in the best of ways. "And we'll be happy because we'll know that we kept them alive, that we gave them a future."

"We will."

That was the future we had chosen for them: whatever they wanted to be, whatever they wanted to make of their future. The only thing that wouldn't be a choice was their happiness. There would be love around them, and we would do whatever it took to make sure their life was a good one, a happy one. They absolutely deserved that, no matter what it took.

We would ensure they lived through all of this, through all the enemies we made and had yet to make. No one would stop them from having the chance to choose who they would be.

I was ripped from my thoughts by my body being thrown back onto the bed, with Kol sinking into me in the best of ways. His lips moved along my jawline, his teeth nibbling the skin down my next, and I couldn't pull him close enough.

"One more time," he murmured, and his tongue rubbed across the dimple of my collar bone. "And then we'll sleep."

It was the responsible thing to do, and right now wasn't the time to be selfish. We absolutely had to be responsible right now, so I wasn't going to protest that, even if parts of me wanted to just go all night and deal with the consequences later.

The consequences of that were too bleak right now, things I couldn't actually deal with, so responsibility it was.

That didn't take away from this moment, however. Making responsible choices didn't take away from the glory that was my life.

I had the best eternity ahead, even with the hard parts.

* * *

 **A/N: Read, review, and enjoy!**


	9. 08: Recruitment

"I woke up this morning with a grudge the size of your story.  
Oh, I feel, I feel so low.  
Let me start at the end, the part I haven't figured out yet.  
Yes, I am, I'm moving slow . . .  
. . . If I just saved you, then you could save me too."

 _No One Does It Better_ : You Me at Six

* * *

"So you can't leave town, and the twins can't leave town."

I hated hearing it said out-loud again, with the start of a new day, but this was the reality we were facing. My eyes moved over to find Marcel, and I nodded. "That's the way it seems."

He glanced over to Davina, who sat next to him on the couch across from the one Kol and I were sitting in. "You got any ideas, D?"

She shook her head. "I have no idea how they might keep you here, unless it's the Ancestors."

Kol rubbed a hand over his mouth, but every muscle of his body tightened. "We can't exactly kill them, can we?"

"What do you plan to do?" Marcel asked. "Slaughter you way through the nine covens?"

"I will burn this town to the ground if I have to, and I will sleep like a baby about it because I will know that no one can hurt my children or the woman that I love," Kol said, and he didn't miss a beat. There wasn't a hint of hesitation or remorse, and that was something I could understand right now. "So yes, that was the plan."

Acting without thinking was what killed that woman last night. _I_ had killed that woman last night, and I realized that maybe that had been necessary. Maybe it hadn't. It didn't matter either way because she was dead, and I couldn't change that no matter how much I wished that I could.

I sighed and squeezed Kol's hand in mine a bit, grabbing his full attention immediately. "We can't just kill people for no reason. I don't think the witches are gonna stop coming for _me_ , but right now, they're not concerned about the twins. Do they even know that I'm an Original?"

"I'm fairly certain everyone does at this point," he said.

"Okay, so they probably think I'm bound the white oak like you guys are," I reminded him.

He let out a heavy breath. "Yes, well, Rebekah has shown that the white oak can appear out of nowhere. I wouldn't be surprised if our mother took some to her grave."

"Kol, you ensured yourself that she took nothing to her grave," Rebekah spoke up for the first time, from her place standing just inside the doorway of the parlor we were sitting in.

Kol glared over at his sister, though it wasn't as bitter as it might've been towards someone outside of the family. "What I'm saying is, Darcy pointed out to me yesterday that anything is possible at this point. I had children, and that was impossible to us just over a year ago. What if they find another way?"

"I don't think they can just find a way to kill us," she said.

"They have to, though, right?" I asked. "Because I have to die so they can get their magic back. I'm pretty sure they'll stop at nothing to find a way to kill me, which means they'll find a way to kill any of you and the vampire race entirely."

"Whoa, hang on a second." Marcel leaned forward, and his eyes were locked on me. "What does the entire vampire race have to do with all of this?"

"After our mother's recent attempts on our lives, we discovered that killing the Original will kill their entire bloodline," Elijah said, before I even got the chance.

The corners of his eyes tightened, and he took a slow breath in. "So if Darcy dies, Davina dies. If Klaus dies, my guys and I die."

"Precisely."

"So this is now more than just keeping the witches from getting their magic back," Marcel said, and there was an almost icy tone to his words. It wasn't friendly, whatever it was. "We have to protect ourselves, and I have to protect everyone I have left."

"Glad to know we have your attention now," Kol snapped.

I noticed Marcel's eyes growing dark on the inside, not the vampire kind of dark, and it was just going to show the rivalry that existed between the two. Right now, if we were gonna figure this out, that couldn't get in the way.

"Stop, Kol," I said. I didn't usually like standing in direct opposition of Kol, especially in favor of someone else, but if I sided with Kol, it was just gonna make Marcel angrier. Everything else had to be put to the side. "He was helping us. He's right. This does change stuff for him."

Kol let out a huff and leaned back into the couch behind him. "Fine. Does anyone have any useful suggestions at this point, or are we to simply hide here until someone decides that they'd rather die than lose their magic? Because these people are willing to sacrifice their children in some insane ritual to ensure they keep it. I don't believe they value their lives very much at this point."

"You're right," I said. "We can't be on the defensive side right now. We have to do something."

"What can we do?" Rebekah asked. "We don't know what they're capable of at this point. We don't even know what _you're_ capable of at this point."

"I'm capable of doing whatever I have to do to ensure nothing happens to anyone in my family." I hated using harsher tones with anyone I cared about, especially when I wasn't mad, but she needed to understand that this unstable magic _would_ be used to protect my kids, even if it meant figuring it out. "That's what I'm capable of."

She shook her head. "Not if this gets worse. This magic is unstable. You saw what happened when you tried to make that daylight ring."

I hated hearing it, the reminder of what had happened when I tried to make Marcel a daylight ring so I could unlink him. It was a simple spell, but I had so much magic that it was explosive.

It was unstable, and believing that I could stabilize it was dangerous and reckless. That kind of thinking would get someone dead.

This . . . magic was unstable.

It was nothing I had ever experienced, nothing that Shea had ever heard of. When we realized that the magic wasn't going away, that it was the cause behind my out of control magic back home and here, she was confused. She said that had never happened, that siphons bodies can't retain magic. Whether they use it or not, it does go away.

Why it wasn't going away didn't matter. What mattered was that it wasn't. My body wasn't consuming it, so in theory, there was no way to make it go away.

Except . . . I could do that.

"You're right."

Kol noticed the softness of my words, how distant they sounded, and he leaned up off the couch immediately, to study my expression further. "Love?"

"This magic in me is unstable. As long as the magic is inside of me, they won't leave me alone." I couldn't contain the grin that spread when I looked up at him, when my eyes moved across the room to the rest of the Mikaelsons. "There may be a way to get the hell out of town."

His lips thinned. "How?"

"If I don't have the magic, they don't care about me," I pointed out. "We can leave town, and they can get their stupid magic back. I'll just kill any who come and try to hurt the twins."

"You have the magic, though," he said. "It's not going away. That's sort of the problem."

"You remember when I was telling you about what I can do?" I asked, and I watched his eyes soften, watched him get lost in the memories of our life when things were much simpler. "I take the magic from things, and I can store it."

He hadn't smiled the way he did then since we got to New Orleans, and I adored seeing his stretch across to his cheeks. "In a vessel. You are a genius. You wouldn't happen to have it with you, would you?"

The feeling of his lips against my forehead, paired with his smile, had my own widening. "No. I left it in Mystic Falls."

"Shit."

"But I can get Caroline to bring it to me," I said.

Rebekah gave me a sideways stare. "Caroline? That's oddly specific."

"She's the only one who wouldn't have someone follow," I said. "I mean, there's always Alaric, but he would tell everyone. The last thing I need is Damon here telling me that I'm in over my head."

Kol's teeth snapped together loudly enough that I heard it, but they didn't stay clenched so tight. The muscles of his jaw relented, at least enough that he could speak. "Yes. The last thing we need is Damon Salvatore down here meddling in family affairs."

I smirked at him, despite the darkness hardening his usually soft stare—at least when it was turned in my direction. "He is family, you know. One day, he'll marry my sister, and you know what that means, by definition?"

His eyes darkened so much that I wondered if some of it was his vampire side showing, but the veins around his eyes didn't start to show. "Let's just hope they break up then."

"You're the worst," I informed him.

Stefan grinned from where he stood in the room, reminding us all that it wasn't just the Mikaelsons and the people from New Orleans here right now. "Is this about the—?"

"Yeah," I sighed, and he just laughed. "I'm fairly certain that's what this is about."

"He helped you leave!" Kol exclaimed.

"Yes because at this time, they all hated you and thought you lied to me," I said. "They wanted you dead and wanted me far away from you to ensure that could happen. Now, Kol, I think it's time to let bygones be bygones and focus on the problem at hand."

I didn't give him much time to protest, as there were things I needed to get done. Instead, I leaned forward to the table between the couches, meant to serve as a coffee table of sorts, but it was more elaborate than all of that. It held my phone well enough, though.

"Darcy!" Caroline squealed the second she answered. "Hi! How's New Orleans?"

I took a deep breath. "I need a huge favor, and by huge favor, I mean super big."

"Okay," she said, but she drug the word out, much further than a two-syllable word should've gone on.

I rubbed my lips together. "Long story short, do you remember that vessel that Kol gave me to store magic so I always had some in case something went wrong?"

"Yeah," she said. "That ugly old necklace you used to wear all the time?"

Kol turned his head my way, his eyes tight. "That was a four century old artifact, Caroline."

"Yes, and still very ugly," she said, without a single bit of shame. That was Caroline Forbes for you. She was gonna speak her mind, whether you liked it or not. "What about it?"

"I need you to bring it to me, in New Orleans," I said.

There was a short pause on the other side of the line. "O-kay, you're gonna have to explain that to me. I'm on my way to my car, but I kinda need to know what's going on, right?"

I sighed. "I'm sort of stuck here. I could give a long ass explanation, but I really don't need anyone else coming to town right now. I need you to come alone, and don't tell anyone where you're going, okay?"

"Yeah. Okay," she said, and it was obvious that her mood had gone south since she had first answered the phone. "I'll call you when I get back to Mystic Falls."

I rubbed my hand across the back of my neck, pressing my fingers into the muscles to attempt to loosen them some. "Great. Thanks, Care."

"Anything for you, Darcy."

I didn't bother with goodbyes, and that was pretty much expected. Everyone knew at this point, Kol better than any.

I would never be ready to say goodbye to him, or anyone else I cared about. I didn't do goodbye so well.

I set my phone back on the table. "Okay, so, _now_ we sit here and wait."

"Actually, we can't do that," Marcel disagreed. "The witches didn't just overpower us alone. They got the werewolves in the Bayou to help."

"Why would the werewolves help the witches?" I asked, and I fell back into the couch, to further make myself comfortable. "I thought everyone hated everyone in the supernatural world."

"The werewolves had a curse put on them decades ago that made them wolves every night, except the night of a full moon," he explained, and his eyes shifted away, towards no one. "They spent a few hours as a human, and every other day was spent as a werewolf. They were desperate, willing to do anything to have that curse removed. When the witches offered them a chance to break that curse and kill vampires, obviously they took it. If a vampire is seen anywhere inside the Quarter, they're to be killed immediately, without hesitation. Your vampire friend is in danger."

There were cures for a werewolf bite, two now. Kol and I had shown that my blood cured a werewolf bite more than once, so there was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, two sources of a cure for a werewolf bite.

What if multiple werewolves bit her? What if they just killed her quickly? There was no way to know what might happen, so we would for sure have to pick her up from the airport. From there, they couldn't stop me.

"Okay, so how about this?" I asked. "I go into town, try and figure out what the hell is going on—"

Kol didn't even let me continue from that point, and he scoffed. "Are you out of your bloody mind?"

"We can't just sit here on our hands!" I insisted. "Plus, I need to start finding a way to negotiate with the witches."

"Negotiate?" he asked. "What are you planning to do?"

"Easy. Give them the magic in the vessel. In return, they let us leave town."

"If it's the Ancestors, they have no choice in the matter," Davina spoke up, reminding me of the inside knowledge we had on the witches of New Orleans, specifically the French Quarter coven. She hated them for what they tried to do to her, and she grew angrier the more they tried to hurt the people she cared about, the more they tried to hurt _babies_. "The Ancestors control the witches here, and I don't think they'll accept your offer. Right now, they have you all contained right where they want you."

"I have to try." I began gnawing on my bottom lip, but my thoughts were racing, focusing on one solution to this puzzle that might fix everything. "This is a mess, but I have an idea."

Kol hadn't looked away from me since I made the suggestion that I go into town, but his eyes were softer now. "An idea?"

"Well, if we can convince the werewolves to join us—"

Marcel held a hand up. "Werewolves _hate_ vampires, especially the ones here."

"Right, but they also hate their curse," I pointed out, and Marcel's eyes just tightened. He wasn't the only one staring at me, though. Every eye in the room was turned my way, but I didn't let it distract me. "I don't know if it's even possible, but when I first met Klaus—or heard of Klaus, met Elijah—they were looking for the doppelgänger to break the curse put on Klaus. It was under the guise that they were breaking the sun and the moon curse, which obviously wasn't real, but those curses things that exist in a way. Vampires can't walk in the sun. Werewolves turn under a full moon. Vampires can walk in the daylight. What if there's a way to protect werewolves from turning?"

Most of the people in the room watched me with indifference, but there was light in Kol's eyes that went beyond happy. It was something more, a gleam of pride, and it was the reason he smiled, despite everything else.

Rebekah and Elijah were both eyeing me as if what I said was surprising, but they had been around a thousand years. Why was that so surprising to them?

Maybe it wasn't the idea. Maybe it was the fact that _I_ had the idea, something they hadn't even thought about.

"We can't take on the witches and the werewolves at the same time," I continued, when no one seemed to have anything to say. "This magic is unstable at best, but right now, the only thing I care about is keeping my kids and my family alive. I just asked someone I care about dearly to come into New Orleans, and I would like to think that means she's not gonna die for me. If we can get the werewolves on our side, the witches will be at a disadvantage."

"What makes you so sure we can even do this?" Marcel asked.

"If there's a spell, I can do it," I said, with probably more confidence than I should've had. "Tribrid, remember?"

"You exploded Marcel's daylight ring," Rebekah reminded me. "Do you remember that?"

I started chewing on my bottom lip again, and I leaned forward, to rest my elbows on my knees. "But if I'm doing a lot of them at the same time, I can do it."

"Our mother's grimoire."

I hadn't expected Elijah to be the first with an idea, the first of the Mikaelsons to speak up, and though his words were soft, I heard them. "What?"

"Her lover was a werewolf," he said, and I realized that the answer should've been obvious. "If any such spell existed, she would've wanted to find it for him. If she found it, she would've kept it in her grimoire, which is one of the things we always travel with, even for short trips."

"It's downstairs, with Nik and Mother's coffins," Rebekah said, and she headed for the door at a human speed, even though we were all vampires here. It had probably become habit, since the twins sometimes freaked out at the sight of it all. "I'll go get it."

"Say there is a spell," Kol said, and he leaned forward, too, to give me a better view of him. I wouldn't protest that even on my worst day. "How do you plan to do it? And what makes you so certain that the werewolves will even listen to your request? What makes you so sure they won't take the rings and use them against us?"

I smirked a bit. "You think I'm just gonna bat my eyelashes? Come on. I'm not stupid. There's this thing called a failsafe. I let them use the rings to not turn at a full moon, and I happen to be really close with this guy who used to make these things called dark objects."

He knew. That was all I had to say because he knew what I was implying, what I wanted to do with each and every ring, and his grin grew wild. "Are you implying what I think you are?"

"What was it you told me about?" I asked. "This bracelet of obedience?"

He let out a breath, the excitement bubbling out of him so vibrantly that it was warming me up on the inside. "You think you can combine the two spells?"

"Right now, I think I can," I admitted. "I'll have to figure out a way to combine the two, but you know more about magic than anyone I've ever met. I'm sure you can help me."

"You have no idea how much I would love that."

I laughed. "I think I might. Doing both spells will be a powerful enough spell that this magic shouldn't make the rings explode, but this does sort of bring attention to a huge problem we have. We need more witches."

His eyes tightened. "We absolutely don't need more witches."

"Yes we do." I turned my body, to fully face him, and I tucked my legs beneath me. "What if this is the Ancestors? What if we have to fight this out until January? Even if I get rid of this magic, I can't do all of this by myself."

"Yes, and do you think any witches are just going to come to a war zone?" he asked. "Especially to help vampires?"

I took a deep breath and nodded. "Witches who aren't bound to the spirits might."

It was easy to forget that some people were in the room because they didn't speak up much. With Ayven and Oryn upstairs with the twins, everyone else was in the parlor or living room—whatever this room was supposed to be.

Shea pushed herself off the wall now, taking a few steps towards me. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm considered an abomination because of the nature of my magic," I said. "I'm not the only one out there."

"At this point, you actually are because the rest are _dead_ ," she said, emphasizing that word so it sunk in better. I . . . was the only siphon left . . . because I killed them all. "Remember? Siphons are exclusively Gemini."

They were dead, and I had to live with that, with all that I had done. Siphons were rare as it was, but they were dead.

Impossible things happened every day. Bonnie brought Jeremy back once, and there had been consequences, but was that the only way? Magic had done incredible things, so was there more than one way to bring back the dead?

If we could bring back some siphons to help, make them vampires we could compel . . . we would have witches that the spirits couldn't control.

Shea shook her head. " _No_. I see those gears turning. The only siphons out there that anyone knows about were the Heretics and my sociopathic cousin."

I gave her the best smile I could. "Right."

"And if you bring back the _Heretics_ , they know more about what you're doing than you do!" she exclaimed. "You can't control them."

"I can compel them," I disagreed.

She rubbed her hands over her face. "Darcy, siphons can siphon compulsion away!"

My eyes widened. "What? Whoa. Okay, why haven't I heard about this?"

"When have you needed to get rid of compulsion?"

That was a fair point. Shea and Prisca had had a lot on their plates when we first met, helping me speed up the growth of the twins in the womb, and then after that, we had been working so hard to keep them safe. Until the Gemini were dead, we didn't get a chance to slow down.

After that, they both needed time to process. Maisyn and Prisca had gone off, trying to break the sire bond, and Shea and Sutton just spent time exploring the world. If I had any questions about what I was, what I could do, she was a phone call away, but things settled for a little while. It didn't matter much.

Life was good and happy, so when would I have needed to know about siphoning away compulsion?

I sighed. "Look, Shea, at this point, I'll take any suggestions. I'm kinda trying not to freak out here. You said the Heretics knew more about siphoning, but what about your cousin?"

She folded her arms over her chest. "He's a _sociopath_."

"And I'm a blood crazed lunatic," Kol reminded her, a rather large smile forming. "We don't judge here."

Shea's eyes tightened in Kol's direction for a few moments before she glanced back at me, letting out a sigh. "He doesn't know much about vampires. Joshua was afraid he might try and become one if he found out he retained and had full access to his magic that way, so I doubt he'd know he can siphon compulsion away. He'll figure it out anyways because he's smart, even if you can't tell by having a conversation with him."

I tapped my fingers against the couch around me, but for now, I decided to let it go. Yes, we did need more witches, but right now, this wasn't priority. We had to focus on making the place safe to walk around, which meant weakening the witches and getting more people on our side.

Everyone had made the choice to give up their magic to be able to protect the twins better, and we were now facing the consequences of that choice now. I had wondered if this day would come, and it was here.

The sound of heels coming up the stairs, down the hall to head back to the living room, I knew Rebekah was coming back, so I wasn't surprised to see her reenter the room. She held a very old grimoire in her hands, definitely worn with age and use, and she handed it to me without a word.

Kol took it from me and started scouring through it. I was the witch, but he was the one who knew way more about magic than anyone in the room could even hope to know. Shea was smart, and she had learned a lot, but she had _nothing_ on Kol. She knew more about siphons and Gemini magic, but that was about it. Everything else? Kol had her beat by a landslide.

I had memorized the spell to make the daylight rings at this point, even though I had only done it once for Davina. Bonnie had made ours, though mine was no longer necessary, and we didn't go around turning people for fun.

As horrible as it was, daylight rings were kind of a privilege. If all vampires had them, there would be reason to do something about it, like make the spell no longer work? I didn't know if it was possible, but giving all vampires daylight rings just wasn't a good idea.

I guess, in theory, giving all werewolves moonlight rings—

I was ripped from my own thoughts by the same surge of voices, of noise, as I had experienced yesterday morning, when Jane-Anne had done a spell on Marcel. I hadn't quite figured out just what she was doing, but I had learned what this rush of everything was.

It was stronger this time, moving through my body and blurring my vision faster. Scattered images raced through my mind, and all I could see was Jane-Anne, surrounded by some witches. She was chanting something next to a pile of bones, and voices in my head were whispering _consecration_.

I didn't know what that was, what that meant, but Jane-Anne was trying to consecrate someone.

The world around me came back faster, and I was surprised to open my eyes and find Kol right next to me, holding me. I would never mind being this close to him, but there was so much fear clouding his eyes that even the smallest hint of warmth couldn't be found.

"They're consecrating someone," I said, but it was hard to catch my breath. "What the hell is that?"

"Consecrating?" Davina asked. "Who died?"

"It was just a pile of bones," I said, and my eyes moved over to her, towards her scrunched expression. "Whoever it was died a long time ago."

"They're consecrating a powerful witch," she murmured, and a line formed between her brows. "They need an Elder. Did something happen to Agnes?"

"Who?"

Davina cleared her throat. "She was an older woman, around fifty or so?"

I realized that Davina was thinking of someone specific, and the only witch that stuck out as an older woman amongst the crowd I had seen the night before was the one that would probably haunt me later in life. "Wore purple wraps around her head?"

She nodded. "That's her."

My eyes began burning, foretelling tears I didn't wanna shed right now. "Who did I kill?"

"You killed her?" Davina grinned, which was a bit unsettling. She hadn't been a vampire long, but I did underestimate how upset she was about what the witches had done to her and her friends. "That was their last Elder."

I was grateful for the distraction, something to help fight off the tears. "What?"

"To complete the Harvest, they need an Elder," she said. "If they're consecrating remains, that means they're trying to make another Elder. You have to stop them."

"How?"

"Call them out," she said. "Talk to them. _Distract_ them."

"That's not happening!" Kol exclaimed, not giving anyone else a chance to agree to that—most specifically me, I imagined.

"He's right," Rebekah said. "That's absolutely mad."

The room was growing louder, and the world around me was fading. It was becoming too easy to sense this now, though it was definitely inconvenient. How often would this happen? Marcel used this when Davina had this power to sense any time the witches did a spell, but was it only when they did spells of the more complicated nature? Or was it just easier to ignore if they were simpler spells?

Could they overpower me by just doing a spell?

They were doing the same spell as before, but the world didn't fade quite like it had. I heard Jane-Anne's voice chanting, but I didn't see the room. All I could sense was that she was doing the same spell again, that it wasn't working.

"It didn't work," I said. "They're trying again."

Davina nodded. "They'll keep trying. They have to have a powerful witch for it to work. The one who consecrates the most powerful witch becomes an Elder."

"How do we ensure they don't find any powerful witches?" Marcel asked. "Because if they can't do the Harvest without an Elder, that's obviously the best course of action."

"I don't know if we can," Davina admitted. "There have been many powerful witches in our history, and all it's gonna take is them finding the one the Ancestors will accept."

I noticed the grimoire wasn't in Kol's hands anymore, and I imagined he had dropped it when I had become overcome with the magic the witches were using. He probably hadn't hesitated to grab onto me, and he didn't care who saw that.

With a sigh, I reached down to pick it up, and I glanced over at him, finding his stare already on me. "For now, I think we need to focus on the werewolves. Elder or not, they can't do the Harvest without this magic. Right now, we're at a huge disadvantage, and I'd like to change that."

He nodded and took the grimoire back from my hands, finding the place he had been at quickly. I wondered how many times he had looked through the grimoire, as he barely even stopped to see what spells were on each page. He knew what they were from a glance, though I doubted he memorized which spells were between the front and back covers.

Out of nowhere, somewhere close to the back of the grimoire, he stopped completely. Every muscle in my body tensed, the anticipation building, and one look around the room, I knew I wasn't the only one who noticed, who waited to hear what had caught his attention.

A smile slow grew on his lips, and his eyes drifted back to me. "Why would she have something about a black kyanite stone?"

Why was there a page about a ring without a spell inside?

I leaned over a bit, to get a better view of the grimoire, and I saw what he saw—a page that was beyond recognition. It was hard to say if someone had purposely blurred the contents, or if it had happened sometime over the centuries. There were only random things visible here and there, one spot being where the words _black kyanite stone_ were written in the far corner of the page.

I moved closer, placing my fingers against the page to try and see if there was something more, but I could see it. The page that was destroyed was suddenly blocking my vision, clear as the sun was up in the sky. I could read the contents, hear the words being chanted in Esther's voice. I had only spoken with her briefly, but I would recognize that voice anywhere.

The world around me disappeared for just a few moments, just long enough for me to see Esther—her golden hair long down her back, dressed in the attire from at the turn of the millennium. She kept glancing over her shoulder, but she was with a man, a man with brown hair and familiar blue eyes that I had seen so many times. They had only recently become eyes that I wasn't afraid to see, and now they would remain closed for the next two decades, at least.

This was Klaus' real father, and Esther was giving him a ring with a black stone.

I stood to my feet the second the world came back, the light almost blinding, but I didn't care much about letting them adjust. I was simply fired up and ready to get started with this.

I knew it. The spell . . . it was echoing in my mind, and I could do it. I could repeat it over and over until it became almost instinct, which is what it would have to be in order to make all these rings for the werewolves of New Orleans.

Every eye was on me, with Kol's the most concerned for my well-being. I didn't know how much what had just happened looked like the witches' of New Orleans doing a spell, but it was something else entirely, something that didn't hurt and didn't bother me one bit.

It was answers.

"I know the spell."

* * *

 **A/N: And I'm back! Hopefully with more frequent updates, but life with a toddler is always an adventure. :)**

 **I've been in a bit of a funk lately, but I sort of just realized that I have this story outlined to the end, so I can keep going through it. It's actually helped me get out of my funk, which is awesome. I've had chapter 12 halfway done for a long time now, and I'm finally finishing it. It's probably the dirtiest chapter in the series so far, but I'm having fun with it, so I hope you enjoy it when we get there too.**

 **Sorry for rambling.**

 **Read, review, and most importantly, enjoy. :)**


	10. 09: Werewolf

"You're only so lonely, and I never had a doubt.  
You don't even know me, still you pass your judgement out.  
When you belong, you're just a face in the crowd.  
You're only lonely so lonely, like everybody else.

You are not a diamond.  
You are not a shining star.  
It doesn't mean that you're not perfect exactly as you are."

 _You Are Not_ : Young Guns

* * *

The Abattoir was a stunning building. I didn't ask the history of it, though I imagined Elijah, at least, could give me an extensive, very detailed history of when it was made and everything that had gone on inside prior to the Mikaelsons being forced to flee New Orleans.

I leaned against the railings on the second story, overlooking the large plaza just inside the gates. It was really something, a place that I could understand why they might want to live.

Was their life good here before? Was this where their family throve the most? I knew that this was where Kol had been daggered, twice, but that was in the past, in everyone's minds.

When this was all over, could we have a good life here?

It was a nice thought, one that almost made me smile, but the reality was, this was New Orleans. I had never been anywhere where the supernatural community was so _open_ , but there was so much tension between all of them. The werewolves weren't even allowed inside the French Quarter, and I didn't know what could be done to ease any of the tension between the others.

In a way, it was easy to blame Marcel for this, but witches and vampires never got along. Humans and vampires shouldn't have gotten along the way that they did, so of course the Factions were all fighting. Even if the witches lost access to their ancestral magic, they would still find ways to practice. It would take time to rebuild, but they _could_ connect to normal practices of magic, such as the spirit magic that most witches relied on.

There would never be a time where New Orleans was a safe place, not until my kids were grown and immortal. Even then, I didn't imagine it'd be that safe.

The sound of soft footsteps against the stone floors ripped me from my thoughts, and I found myself actually smiling now. I didn't have to turn around to know who was approaching.

"Out of all of the places in the world you could've chosen, you chose the Abattoir?"

We hadn't been inside of New Orleans long, but since coming here, I hadn't found myself downstairs. I didn't talk to Klaus as often as Elijah, Rebekah, and even Kol did. Sometimes, Kol would go down there just to thank his brother, to admit that forgiving him was easier than he ever would've imagined.

Bygones were bygones, and the Mikaelsons were united. Even if one had to remain daggered in a coffin for them to stay that way, they were unified, as a family should be.

The warm smile, the bright glow in his blue eyes, was still new. After coming back to Mystic Falls once I gave birth to the twins, we had been at war with one another often, over the best future for the twins. At the time, I saw it as Klaus just trying to maintain control, and I wasn't gonna let that happen.

Looking at it now, it was easy to see that, crude as his methods were, all he wanted was to protect the twins. He didn't care who he had to hurt and piss off to do that. At the end of the day, he would see to it that the twins were safe.

That was more of what I needed right now, someone who saw past the human decency that still remained inside of me. I found myself becoming that person, even if I didn't want to be. It was what was being forced on me.

I nodded. "This was your home once. It was the place you were happiest."

"It was."

"I guess I wanted to see what that looked like on you," I admitted. "You'd be pissed if you saw it now. It was taken over by witches."

"Yes. Elijah told me that New Orleans was a war zone. The Abattoir stood as a fortress, the best place to fortify and prepare for war." He leaned against the railing in front of him and breathed in heavily. "I assume that's why you're here talking to me."

"I'm in desperate need of help," I sighed. "I guess a part of me has always been curious about the werewolf side of me. I mean, I was seventeen when I discovered that I had a dormant werewolf gene. I had triggered it before I turned nineteen, but I still have no idea where I come from. Obviously I met Isobel, but she never said anything about who my father was. I'm not a Lockwood. We checked."

His head tilted a bit. "I know that feeling well. I found the man that I believed to be my father impaled by the man I had grown up believing was my father. To this day, I sometimes wonder if Mikael slaughtered all of the werewolves of that village or if some of them survived somehow."

My lips quirked to the side, but my focus shifted back to him. "Will we ever know?"

"I would like to think we would." He looked at me now too, as if he felt my gaze on him. "Is this why you've come to talk to me? To discuss the pains of not knowing who you are?"

"I mean, you're the only one I've got to talk to about it," I said. "Everyone else I know . . . they all know where they came from, and maybe it's the werewolf thing. Maybe it's the part of me that wonders if I belong to a pack, or if I'm just meant to be alone."

"You're not alone," he reminded me. "We can form our own pack, the Original Mikaelson hybrids. One day, Theia and Alastor can join us, and we can allow their hybrids as well, I suppose."

It was a strangely nice thought, even if there were still so many unanswered questions. To have a pack of our own, to help us cope with the uncertainty of that side of us . . . it was a strange sense of family I had never felt with Klaus before.

I laughed. "You know what? Let's do it. We'll fight for Alpha dominance later."

His laughter was more real than I had heard from him in a long time, maybe ever. He had laughed before, with darkness overclouding the bright effect laughter was supposed to bring, but that was oddly absent, in a way I had only ever seen around his family.

He had told me that I was family, and it was becoming very, very real, even in this brief interaction inside his mind.

I hadn't actually known that the Abattoir would look so real inside his mind, as I had never personally been there. I had helped Marcel escape, but everything was through his eyes. It wasn't at the glory it was in now, as if the witches hadn't taken over and ruined it.

The two of us stood against the railings, simply observing the place around us. Klaus had been here, had _lived_ here. He had probably seen the place at its best, in its most historic moments, yet he still stared in awe.

"I know what it feels like," he finally said. The silence wasn't becoming uncomfortable, but it was beginning to draw out longer than I really had time for. "It played a part in creating the darkness inside, the monster I have become. I had no one who understood, no matter how much my siblings claimed to understand. They couldn't."

"I know I could talk to Kol about all of this, but what can I say?" I asked. "He knows who his parents are, who his family is. I . . . I have Elena, and now I have the twins."

"I know it's not by blood, but we are your family now, Darcy. I know those are just words, but I _do_ know what you're going through." He took a deep breath, to focus his thoughts. "Right now, you should focus on protecting the twins. When this is over, we'll help each other."

I nodded. "That's actually why I'm here. The witches have control over the werewolves in New Orleans. A couple decades ago, a curse was put on the Crescent wolf pack, forcing them turn into wolves except for a few hours during the full moon. It's the only time they've been able to be humans. The rest of their time has been spent as wolves. The witches broke that curse, so they're loyal to them."

"You mean to appeal to them," he said, without a hint of a question.

"I had an idea," I said. "We think your mother made your real father a werewolf equivalent of a daylight ring. Paired with Kol's knowledge of Kemiya and my ridiculously overpowered magic, I think I can make these moonlight rings for the werewolves. If I can protect them from turning, maybe I can get them on our side. At this point, being a werewolf would be the last thing they wanted, right?"

"Right," he said, and he rubbed his hand across his chin. "What do you think Kol can help you do?"

"I don't wanna _control_ the werewolves, but I also don't want them to run away with these rings and help the witches," I admitted. "The rings don't just block the curse. It gives them access to their werewolf abilities at any time."

He turned away from me again, but I still saw the gears turning in his mind. If there was one thing I could always say about Klaus, it was that he thought most things through. He was known to be impulsive from time to time, but for major things, such as this, his brilliant mind thought through it all.

The Mikaelsons all did that, and I wondered if it came with time.

He rubbed his lips together. "What exactly are the witches having the werewolves do?"

"Kill any vampire they see," I said. "And that's a problem because Caroline's on her way here now to bring me the vessel that Kol gave me to store magic."

His eyes grew wide, and his head snapped my way. "She's _what_?"

"If I don't get rid of this magic, we may not have a way out of New Orleans until January," I insisted. "We don't know anything else that can hold magic like that. It's the safest thing we can think to do right now."

His eyes darkened, but even with the stare on me, I didn't really think he was mad at _me_. "Davina led you right into a trap."

"I'm not sure if she even knew," I said. "She knew that she wanted to save Marcel, and we knew that you would want us to do the same. So we did, and we're gonna figure the rest of this out. The witches aren't gonna let us hole up at the Plantation forever, though."

"No, they will not," he agreed. "You shouldn't spend too much time speaking with me. You should be figuring out their next move."

I shook my head. "They're trying to make an Elder, to complete this Harvest ritual. I already know what they're doing next."

"Rebekah told me the gruesome history of it." A tender smile grew across his lips. "I made the mistake of underestimating you, but I'm mostly proud that you're not backing down. You killed a woman last night, but you didn't let it stop you from doing what needed to be done."

I hadn't really thought much about someone telling him about that, and it wasn't because I thought he would disapprove. I just hadn't really gotten used to hearing it said out-loud.

 _You killed a woman last night._

"I guess I have your brother to thank for that," I said, and the only way I was able to get anything out was to grab onto the reminders of the night prior. Kol held me and promised me that he would love me, whether I was the same person I was now or whether I became a darkened version of myself, who didn't care about people and took lives. "I don't know how you guys have lived your entire lives alone. I couldn't do it."

"That's where we are different," he said. "I pushed everyone away, forced my family to do the same, and because of it, we became dark creatures. Your insistence to keep people around you will be what keeps you, well, you."

Was that a compliment?

In the only way I think he knew to give compliments, I think it _was_ his way of giving me a compliment. He told me that he was wrong about me, that he had underestimated my ability to survive an eternity, but that sounded almost like he was finally submitting to what I had told him forever ago.

People didn't have to die to survive.

I was learning from his side of it. Sometimes, people _did_ , if for no other reason than to ensure my children didn't. If he was learning a bit from my side, I was interested to see how that played out in the years to come, when he was finally released from death.

There was a smile on my lips before I realized it, but Klaus smiled at me, too. I wasn't entirely sure I was used to this kind of friendship, but I enjoyed it, more than I ever thought I might. "Do you think this is a bad idea?"

"I do not think you will need to do anything with Kemiya," he said. "Werewolves are loyal by nature. Appeal to them. Show them who you are. Don't let them see the mother, but let them see the lonely werewolf, the one trying to find her family. They will understand true loyalties, and they will side with you. The rings would just be a benefit to their loyalty."

I hadn't thought about it that way, but maybe it came from how foreign the werewolf code of loyalty was to me.

"I've heard stuff about the werewolf loyalty, but I've only ever really known Tyler," I informed him. "There wasn't much loyalty there, in the werewolf sense. He hated me when we came back to town, just because we 'sided' with you guys. He didn't care what reasoning there was behind it."

"It's very real, for werewolves who are more in tune with the werewolf side of themselves," he assured me. "Tyler Lockwood discovered his curse shortly before triggering it, and that was all he really knew about any of it. The werewolves of New Orleans are probably quite in tune with that side of themselves, and they would be willing to hear you out, at the very least."

"Thank you."

I didn't think much about what I was doing. Pushing myself off the railing of the Abattoir was easy enough, and I reached over to wrap my arms around Klaus, to use some of my Original tribrid strength to pull him against me.

Though his body was stiff in my arms, I felt his arms moving to wrap around me. "I'm not one for affection, little witch."

"Get over it," I mumbled, and I just squeezed tighter. "I am."

His hesitance disappeared, and in a way, he sank into the embrace. His grip on me wasn't as tight as mine was on him, but he still genuinely held onto me.

I took a slow breath in. "I hate that things have to be this way. Right now, we could really use you."

"I'm happy to lay in a box for a couple decades if it means that you all have a chance to fight for the twins' lives."

* * *

 **A/N: So I thought it'd be neat to have some Darcy/Klaus interactions. I don't know if it's possible for an Original to communicate with a daggered Original, but I figured if Finn became semi-conscious after so long, it could be.**

 **Read, review, and enjoy. :)**


	11. 10: Loyalty

"Just when you wanna fast forward,  
You know it's gonna hurt some more.  
When you feel the fire is gone,  
I'll pour some gasoline on."

 _Fast Forward_ : You Me at Six

* * *

The salty air, mixed with the Cajun scent that lingered in just about any busy street of New Orleans, was the only smell of freedom I was gonna get right now. To just smell the familiar woodsy scent around the Mikaelson mansion, back in Mystic Falls, would've been an absolute dream, but I wasn't gonna get that lucky right now.

Nope. The witches of New Orleans had doomed me to stay here and kill anyone who tried to hurt my kids.

I hated that a part of me understood what they were trying to do. I did not, in any way, _justify_ anything, but Jane-Anne was trying to save her daughter. She had no idea the Harvest would've gone horribly wrong.

She also had no idea that it would've gone _right_. If it made me a bad witch for putting the well-being of my kids above my coven, then I was a bad witch. That was pretty much decided for me, though, when my siphon nature came to light.

This temporary, sea scented freedom wasn't easy to come by, but nothing in life was ever easy if it was worth it. Just like this outing I found myself on now, I had to work for it. I had to convince the others that it was a good idea, which wasn't so easy when Kol had to worry about my well-being.

They had all stared at me like I was crazy, like I had just said that I was an alien from a galaxy far, far away. All I said was that I should go into town.

"Sometimes, darling, I do question your sanity," Rebekah informed me, the first to speak up. "You're talking about walking into _town_ , where the witches will no doubt know you're coming and find some way to attack. We have no idea what they might do."

"I can't appeal to the werewolves from here, and I've got the best shot of getting them to listen," I reminded her. "I don't have to have the rings for that."

Kol leaned forward away from the couch, his brow knit tightly together. "What's going through that pretty head of yours, love?"

"Werewolves are loyal," I said, and I folded my arms over my chest. "They're loyal to each other. If nothing else, I can get them to hear me out."

He rubbed a hand over his mouth, though his eyes were distant. It was just a few moments of this stare, and then he stood. His hands fell by his side, and he took a deep breath. "Okay. Let's go to town."

I shook my head. "We can't both go out, Kol."

"What?"

"If you go out there, and they kill you, I die too," I pointed out. "If you're safe in here, I can't die no matter what they do."

He shifted his weight a bit, but his stare hardened the more he focused on me. "You can't honestly think you're going alone."

"Of course not," I said. "I'm bringing Marcel."

Marcel had been listening to the conversation from the other side of the parlor, sipping on some old whiskey that had been in the fridge, but he choked on it now. "Okay, what? I don't know if you've picked this up, but the werewolves in this town _hate_ me."

I shrugged. "Yeah. Well, consider this a chance to make a peace treaty."

His eyes tightened. "I don't want peace. I want my city back."

"From where I stand, that's not happening if you can't even go outside," I said, with a bit more sass than I intended.

If I was honest with myself, Marcel annoyed me, and it wasn't because he was an annoying personality. It was the things he had done that annoyed me. I respected him in some ways because he didn't mess with kids, but he had a witch put the Crescent curse on the Crescent werewolves. He had used Davina to stop the witches from using magic.

How was any of that right? He had no right to tell them who to be, how to live their lives, but he had forced the werewolves to live most of their lives as _wolves_.

He finished off the rest of his whiskey and set the glass on the table in front of him. "Why am I the one coming?"

"Well, you're the only one still linked to me, thus making you immune to werewolf venom for the time."

His eyebrows rose. "How can you be sure?"

I let out a heavy sigh and simply disappeared from the parlor, where the Mikaelsons, Marcel, and Thierry all sat. The others were upstairs with the twins, or simply enjoying the time they had with one another. I think Oryn and Davina were actually watching the twins, giving the other two couples time to be all coupley.

They had the right idea.

I still hadn't quite gotten used to the tribrid speed I actually had. It surpassed that of an Original vampire, though I hadn't really gotten a chance to see if I was faster than Klaus. Witches didn't have any advanced speeds, so it wouldn't really make sense for me to be faster because of the witch part of me too.

I was in the kitchen in a couple seconds, and I grabbed a knife from the drawer. Rebekah had worked hard to make this place a home again, going so far as to throw out anything old to make room for the new. We hadn't gotten a chance to replace the old with the new, but if things went well today, maybe we would.

How long would we stay at the Plantation, though? It was very clear to me that the Plantation wasn't the safest place for us to be, so was there much point in making it feel like a real home?

Still, there was a knife inside to prove my point, and with it in hand, I ran back into the parlor and shoved it through my hand.

The pain was immense, but it was overpowered by the raw wonder. There was a knife sticking all the way through my hand, and it hurt like a bitch. It was everything you might expect getting a knife stabbed through your hand might feel like, but the vampirism was attempting to heal it. It was making it somehow easier than it would've been as a human.

My eyes were wide as I stared at my hand, and I barely noticed Marcel bleeding from a gaping hole in his hand across the room. "Sorry. That's the first real thing that's happened since I turned. I'm still not used to being . . . not breakable."

Rebekah and Elijah gawked at me from their places in the room, whereas Thierry simply shifted himself uncomfortably. Kol, on the other hand, had a bit of a devious gleam, despite the frown curling down his lips.

"I knew you were a masochist."

I winked at him and ripped the knife from my hand, allowing the wound to heal for both Marcel and me. "I think I'm more of a sadist."

"Okay, _gross_." Rebekah held her hands up. "This is not what we're talking about."

Kol's laughter was vibrant, enough to drown out all the sour moods of the room. Marcel still glared from where he stood, but it probably had something to do with being forced to come with me to begin with.

I just beamed at him. "See? Still linked."

He let out a breath. "Did you have to stab yourself?"

"I guess not." I tapped the end of the knife against the palm of my bloody hand. "So we should get ready and get this over with. With our lives connected, they can't actually kill us, so we should be good."

"I can't believe I'm doing this."

"That makes two of us," Kol said, but his good spirits had died away, taken over by the darkness of his thoughts.

If there was one thing in the world that I knew Kol would absolutely _never_ want, it was for anything to happen to me. He probably didn't like the idea of being unable to ensure I was protected, since the best way to ensure I was meant he had to stay here, where I wasn't going to be.

"Darcy . . . ."

"I know." Though my smile wasn't as vibrant as it had been directed at Marcel, it was full of so much more genuine emotion, such as the burning love I felt for him every single time I looked at him, or heard his voice, or even thought of him. "I promise I'll be careful, and I'll come back in one piece—assuming I don't lose an arm and have to get it sewed back on."

I practically danced my way across the room to wrap my arms around him, to stand on my tiptoes and place a soft kiss on his lips, and when I came back down, there was a glare obscuring his otherwise beautiful face.

"Kidding," I assured him. "I'm not gonna lose an arm. Right now, I'm not entirely sure that these werewolves can even get to me. When I said that killing Agnes was as easy as breathing, I wasn't kidding. I barely did anything, and she was dead."

"Just be careful."

And that was where I was now, being completely careful with Marcel on my side. We were walking through casually, but that didn't mean we were oblivious to the people staring at us as we passed by.

"Where might they go to meet?" I asked, and I found us approaching a familiar street corner.

It had been the place Klaus, Elijah, Kol, and I had come out of the Abattoir on Valentine's Day, to discuss what to do next, and I only remembered it because it was the first time Kol had so vibrantly looked at me with all the love burning inside of him.

"They live in the Bayou, but they could meet anywhere," he said. "If they're working with the witches, I imagine they'll stick around town more. I know their Alpha. His name is Jackson Kenner, and for a werewolf, he's a good man. He might be willing to listen."

"Okay."

He glanced back at me for a second, at least while the road was still busy with traffic. With everything going on in my world, it was sometimes hard to remember that life was going on like normal for the humans. They didn't know anything about any of the darker parts of life lingering around them.

Was I lucky that my life would be full of adventure, or were they lucky that they never had to know the hardships of being the mother of the Mikaelson twins?

"The bar's just up ahead," he said. "It's not the bar we met. It's a different one. I know this girl who bartends there. If the werewolves have a place to meet, she might know something about it."

I nodded. "So she's in on all this?"

"Not exactly," he said, and he stepped into the cleared street, the moment the crossing light flashed on the sign in front of him. "She would just notice if anyone strange showed up."

"Oh. Got it."

The bar he was bringing me to was just across the street, and Marcel stepped in first, without fear. He might've been afraid if he wasn't linked to me, but even staking him wouldn't kill him right now. It would have to be a white oak stake, and even that might not work since I was linked to Kol.

It was really all up in the air what would actually kill him at this point, linked to me.

The room had been full of life and laughter when we stepped in, but it stopped, almost the second the people in the room caught sight of us. They weren't even remotely subtle about it, and almost every eye focused on us.

I wasn't one to poke at the elephant in the room, however, especially when I was currently pretty hard to take down. It might come back and bite me in the ass one day, but I had never been so capable of taking care of myself, of taking care of the people I cared about. That was a more satisfying feeling than I thought it might be.

The getaway where Kol taught me the pain infliction spell and taught me to use magic to break his neck, that was the first time I had even gotten a piece of this satisfaction, but it didn't compare to this.

I stepped up to the bar, but it felt more like floating on the way. Marcel was on my heel, and he sat next to me. He wasn't as nonchalant about every eye on us, but I simply didn't care.

What could they do? Bite me?

I bit harder.

The two of us ordered drinks, as if that was our purpose for being here, and still, no one approached us.

It wasn't until we both got our drinks and took a sip that someone decided to be bold.

A rather cute man approached, with tousled brown hair and pretty boy blue eyes. Had I not had Kol, I might've stared shamelessly, but I did have Kol, and this guy really didn't compare.

It was almost sad how little he had on Kol, and I genuinely found this guy attractive.

"You know the witches' rules, Marcel," he said, and he saw right past me, to the man sitting on the other side of me. "Vampires on the street are fair game."

I scoffed and took another swig of the tequila in my glass, though with a mouthful of it, I noticed something off about the taste. It was more bitter than usual. "Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that."

That got his attention, and that was pretty much all I wanted—to have their focus on _me_. "And who might you be? One of his vampires? Believe me, sweet thing. You were better off keeping that pretty mouth of yours shut."

Marcel burst into a loud fit of laughter, though it was brief. "Ooh, son, you are lucky I'm the one sitting here right now."

The reminder of my fiancé, who might've actually ripped this guy's heart from his chest, made me smile. I was actually very grateful that I _hadn't_ brought him now. "We haven't met. I'm looking for a man named Jackson. Ring any bells? It should because I know he's your Alpha."

Anything pleasant that had kept the muscles of his cheeks and brow loose disappeared, and his entire face tightened, a rage burning in his eyes at the very mention of the one I'm sure they were all loyal to, to the death. "You shouldn't ask questions where you don't belong."

I clicked my tongue against my teeth. "You shouldn't get a mouth when you don't know who you're talking to."

"Old vampire?" he asked, and he snorted, though his eyes began to burn with delight. "Guess what, sweetheart. Every drink served is laced with werewolf venom, ensuring vampires who drink it die, and ensuring the humans who drink it can't be fed on."

"Oh, that's dark." I picked up the cup and focused on it a bit. "I thought it tasted kinda funny."

He smirked now, feeling a lot more confident than he should have. "Would you like to enjoy your last moments, or would you prefer I stake you right here?"

I didn't take my gaze off the cup in my hand, but I didn't have to look at him. All it took was squeezing my other fist and doing the incantation in my head, the one needed to bring this man to his knees.

He let out a loud cry of pain, and like I wanted, he fell to his knees in front of me. I didn't have an ego, and nothing in me wanted people to kneel in front of me. None of that bullshit. I just wanted him to realize who the fuck he was dealing with.

 _Shit, Darcy, you are becoming a_ bitch.

Around the room, others stood to their feet, and their eyes told threats of death. Not all of them were looking at me either, but I wasn't worried about Marcel, just like I wasn't worried about myself.

Before any of them could get closer to the guy on the ground, I used my speed to get in front of him, and I shoved my hand right through his chest. Finding his heart was easier than it should've been, considering I had never actually done this before. I'd broken necks, and that was the extent of my murder.

I didn't wanna _murder_ this guy, though. I just needed their undivided attention.

One glance around the room was all it took to know that I had gotten just that. "Make another move, and I'll rip his heart out."

There was a thin layer of sweat forming across the skin of his forehead, around his hairline, and those blue eyes were empty. The life that had been in there before was giving out, and I knew that this was him accepting what I hadn't even done yet—his own death.

"Just get it over with," he scoffed. "You'll be dead soon enough anyways."

I smirked down at him. "I don't know if you've heard, but there are these things called hybrids."

The man closest to us, with almost radiant green eyes and blond hair that fell in perfect waves, let out a shaky breath, and his nose curled into a snarl. "You're the tribrid."

"Bingo," I said, and I knew smirking was wrong. I just couldn't help it. I was seriously getting an ego, and I needed to find a way to get that in check somehow. "Vampire, witch . . . werewolf. I don't wanna hurt anyone. I just wanna speak with Jackson."

"You can't speak with him," he all but spat. "We won't allow you to get near him."

"If I wanted him dead, I would find him and kill him myself," I informed him. "I'm a _tribrid_. I can track people better than you would even believe. I don't wanna kill anyone. I think we can all reach a mutual beneficial agreement. Don't you?"

He snorted. "We refuse to become some of your hybrid bitches."

"Well, obviously. You guys hate vampires, right? Becoming a hybrid would make you the very thing you hate." With my free hand, I gestured to the guy in the floor, ensuring that everyone remembered that his life was quite literally in my hands in that moment. "I will remove my hand from his chest and leave his heart in place. All you have to do is introduce me to your Alpha."

"Wait."

The blond in front of me only grew angry at the sound of someone's voice. "Sit down, Aiden."

The man stepped forward, running a hand through his curly brown locks to get them in just the right place, but his blue-green eyes focused on me. He reached into his pocket, ignoring the man who had told him to stop, and pulled out his phone.

"Stop!"

Aiden glared at the blond. "You may be okay with letting her kill him, but he's one of us, Oliver. We protect our own."

The blond man, Oliver, flexed his jaw, but he turned away, unwilling to fight with him anymore about this. I kind of wondered if he _wanted_ me to kill the guy, simply to ensure no one listened to anything I had to say.

If he hated vampires that much, why wouldn't he want to ensure none of his pack members listened to one?

Aiden never took his eyes off me. "Jackson? You're needed down at Rousseau's. Jon's mouth has gotten him in trouble again."

" _Shit. What's he into now?"_

"Just get here, and be on your guard," Aiden warned.

" _Be there in five."_

In a sign of good faith, as Aiden hung up his phone and slipped it back into his pocket, I pulled my hand from Jon's chest. He let out a groan of pain, but there was so much relief in his loosening muscles, in the way his body leaned forward to get a better grip on himself.

I knelt down in front of him, demanding his full attention. I got it, in the form of glares straight from the pits of hell. Even his chest that shook without mercy, as he struggled to take breaths in, didn't diminish the power of his stare.

"My name is Darcy," I said, and I gave him the best smile I could. I didn't wanna piss them all off, but I guess they needed to see more of the human side of me. "I know this isn't gonna make a whole lot of sense to you, but I would like to know who I am."

"You're an abomination," he said. "That's what you are."

"I'm a girl born into crazy circumstances," I disagreed, but tears suddenly blocked the vision of his hatred. I had to use the pads of my thumbs to wipe them away, but I didn't let them deter me from what I needed to say. "As a human, my blood was the most powerful binding agent for a spell that existed. I was a doppelgänger. I was also a witch, and there was this part of me that lied dormant inside, something I couldn't explain. It made me angry all the time, in a way I struggled to control. Then, when I became a vampire, it only got worse. I didn't make it a month as a vampire before I killed someone, and that was when I understood that this wasn't just a curse put on my family. It was a part of who I was, a part that I didn't know at all. Is it so wrong to want to know who I am?"

I had never seen a person's stare shift as drastically as I did in that moment, with his baby blues locked in mine. The glare softened until it faded out of existence, and though his breaths were still heavy, they grew steady.

He didn't look at me like I was a monster. There was understanding, and I realized that Klaus was absolutely right. Werewolves were loyal to one another.

"Two decades ago, there was a massacre," he said. "It wiped out a lot of our pack, and those left alive were cursed, to live as werewolves except at a full moon. I survived, but I was put in the care of a witch who only wanted to see me trigger my curse."

I could understand where this was going immediately. "So you never met your parents."

He shook his head. "I was seven when she made me kill someone."

"That's horrible," I whispered, and the tears came back stronger this time, faster. How could someone do that to a seven year old? To a _child_? "I met my biological mother once, and she was a raging bitch. She had become a vampire sometime after we were born, and I honestly believe she turned off her humanity at some point. She was so empty, and I had hoped to find closure, to understand who I was. I got more questions than I got answers. I have a twin sister, identical believe it or not. We're both doppelgängers, which has never happened before. Somehow, we have two different fathers, yet we're identical. The loneliest I have ever felt was the day I realized that I was a werewolf, that everyone I thought was family wasn't. My identical twin sister was just my half-sister, so I was a witch with a dormant werewolf curse."

He heard my words, but something in his mind was clicking, after hearing me go on my spill about who I was, about the loneliest time in my life. "Is that what this is? You're trying to appeal to us?"

"I'm trying to figure out who I am, honestly, and I'm trying to protect my kids," I admitted. "They're werewolves too."

"Yes, and they're witches," he agreed. "And they're born from an Original vampire."

"So does that mean we should all suffer for the sins of our parents?"

The door of the bar opened, before Jon got a chance to even think of a response. My question hadn't been what he expected to hear, I don't think, and his eyes were soft. Even at the sight of the tall man walking through the door, he stared at me with understanding.

The aura of the room shifted. I could just see, through the corners of my peripheral vision, the werewolves around the room relax, so I knew this had to be Jackson.

"What's going on?" he demanded, but his glare was focused on Marcel, who still stood somewhere near the bar. "I thought you were dead."

"I won't go down unless the town is burning around me."

That didn't really settle well with him, but he turned my way now. There was anger, simply because he had been called here to help a pack member in trouble, but it softened, at the sight of the unknown. "Who are you?"

"My name is Darcy." I stood up from in front of Jon and stuck my hand out, but it wasn't until I saw it reaching out that I realized it was the hand that had been around Jon's heart. I quickly pulled it back, replacing it with the other, and I attempted to smile. "Sorry about hurting your friend. I, uh, I'm a bit on edge and do some pretty stupid stuff. I'm just . . . trying to look out for my kids."

He actually shook my hand, once it was the one clean of blood. "I'm Jackson."

"It's nice to finally meet you," I said, and it was true. I just didn't know if he would perceive it as more than forced pleasantries.

He didn't know me, so how would he know that I didn't believe in those?

He dropped my hand carefully, without using excessive force. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to talk to you," I said. "About this alliance you have with the witches?"

"There's nothing to talk about."

Though I nodded, my hand moved to rub across the back of my neck. "Are you so sure about that?"

"You have no idea what we've had to go through for the past two decades," he said, though his eyes moved over to Marcel again. Of course he would glare at the man who forced them to go through that hell. "Yes, I am sure about that."

"Even if I could offer you a way to never have to turn again?"

He scoffed. "You think we want to become hybrids? Like the army of traitors amassing?"

"Are they traitors?" I asked. "Because from where I stand, every hybrid I've made have been sired to werewolf children. They became hybrids to protect unborn werewolf children, which I'm pretty sure doesn't make them traitors."

The more I said the words "werewolf children," the more his hardened expression began to dissolve, and something clicked, a bit of recognition. "You're the Original tribrid."

"I am." I crossed my arms, to shift my stance to something a bit less threatening. If there was one thing I wanted to ensure they realized, it was that I didn't want to hurt any of them. I didn't wanna hurt _anyone_. "Look, from the way I see it, you've got until January before the witches lose their power. When that happens, there will be no one left to protect you from the wrath of the vampires. As soon as I get the chance, I'm doing what any mother should and getting my kids the hell out of this war zone. This alliance you have with them is over in January."

His brow scrunched. "The witches said they would get their magic back."

"Except they can't," I said. "Because I have it, and they've pissed me off. They came for my kids, and I have killed an entire coven of witches to prove that you don't do that. I don't wanna hurt anyone, especially people who might . . . I guess what I'm saying is that I don't wanna hurt werewolves. Their history has too much violence, too much extinction. However, allying yourself with the witches puts you directly against me, and right now, I could kill every last one of you in this room without even moving. I have the power of four witches inside of me, and I'm an Original vampire-werewolf-witch tribrid. Now, that's fucking terrifying. I hate everything about the power that I have, especially right now, but when it comes to protecting my children, I will do whatever it takes. I don't wanna hurt you. I don't wanna hurt any of you, but I'm warning you. Your alliance with the witches will not lead to a good place for any of you."

My words were unsettling. I could see it in his shifting gaze, in the way his stomach clenched, but he wasn't just standing here and making choices without even _looking_ at the others in the room.

After a few moments of deliberation, he took a deep breath. "You come in here talking about wanting to protect werewolves, yet your protection is making us into your vampire-werewolf hybrids. You weren't brought up the way that we were."

"You're assuming that the only way to be free of your curse is to become a hybrid. The truth is a lot different," I admitted. "I know that you hate vampires, and I would never suggest you become one. I have a way to protect you from your curse, and if you're interested, we can discuss this further at another time. I came to town with the intentions of saving a family friend from the witches, and they've forced my hand with the rest of this. I didn't wanna get involved in any of this, but I don't have much choice. You can think about it, discuss it with your pack, but let me just warn you. In a few days' time, I will be coming to take the Abattoir back. Anyone there could die. Just a little heads up, to try and show you that I'm not lying to you. I wanna know who I am, and I don't know if those answers are even here. The more I learn about the werewolf part of me, the more I realize that there's a code of loyalty beyond almost anything I've ever seen. Think about it for a few days, and when we take the Abattoir back, if any of you are there, I'll get the hint. You're going to stick with the witches, and that's your choice to make. If not, come join me there. We can discuss this further."

I could've stayed to see him change his mind, or to even watch him contemplate all of this, but I didn't really want to do any of that. I said my peace, which was all I wanted to do. The longer I stuck around, the more likely I was to run into a witch, and it didn't matter how powerful I was. I didn't want to do that.

Marcel was right on my tail, but the two of us didn't stop until we were already a few blocks away from Rousseau's. I didn't actually intend to stop there, but Marcel reached out to grab onto my arm, stopping me in my tracks.

"Are you out of your mind?"

I had to blink a few times, to try and process what he was saying. "What?"

He slowly shook his head. "What is this about taking the Abattoir back?"

"Oh." I let out a breath, grateful that _that_ was what he was hung up on. "Not entirely sure how I'm gonna do it yet, but I was talking to Klaus earlier. He said it's the most fortified place in New Orleans, the best place to prepare for war. I don't wanna to go to war, but if I have to, I will."

"So you're just gonna walk in there, ask nicely, and expect the witches to give it back?" he asked.

"Why would I do that?" I didn't like standing out in the open, so I started walking again, with Marcel following just as he had before. The car we brought was only a couple more blocks away, so we were almost in the clear. "I happen to know what the witches want most right now, and I happen to know exactly how to give them that."

"What can they want more than their magic, which you have been so adamant about ensuring they _never_ got back?"

I didn't stop walking, which meant he didn't notice the way my lips curled up into a smile. It probably wasn't the cute and innocent smile that caught Kol's attention so profoundly, but it was one that I learned after becoming a vampire.

No matter how much I wanted to pretend that I was the same person, I _wasn't_. I was a vampire now, and that didn't have to completely change everything about who I was. I just had to accept that it _was_ changing certain things.

If a devious smile was the worst it got? Awesome.

"Why don't we discuss this somewhere not so open? With the others involved in all of this."

* * *

 **A/N: Okay! Here it is! Sorry for the constant delays, but I'm doing my best. I hope you guys are still enjoying this story. It's definitely special to me, as it's the first story I've made it this far in. I've never seen a story all the way through, but I intend to do that now. Even if it takes time to get there, I will see this through.**

 **There's another part before we get there, to ensure the ending isn't rushed and not what these characters deserve, but we will make it all the way through to the end.**

 **Read, review, and enjoy! :)**


	12. 11: Our Fight

"I need you here with me,  
But you're still leaving me here, alone.  
I'm not trying to start a war . . .  
. . . I'd fight for you  
Even if it leaves me stranded."

 _The Way We Were_ : Stateside

* * *

Everyone around the room stared at me, as if I had actually lost my mind, but Kol simply rubbed his hands over his face, maybe hoping that it would help him figure out what to say?

He didn't wanna hurt my feelings after all.

Finally, his hands fell by his side, and a heavy breath passed through his parted lips. "You want to do _what_?"

"Okay. Do I need to go over all of this again?"

He shook his head. "Just the last part, where you're talking about giving them the remains of the most powerful witch we know!"

"To be fair, I only used your mom as an example," I assured him. "I don't actually wanna hand your mom over. The Ancestors could potentially be the ones keeping us here, and if she's a part of them through this crazy Elder consecration stuff, that would give her all the power she needed to kill them before we even got the chance to leave New Orleans, maybe even come back again. No. I don't mean your mom specifically. That was just an example."

His eyes softened, but his lips pressed into a thin line. "Remind me again why you're so hell bent on getting the Abattoir back?"

"Look, if Klaus tells me it's the best place to fortify for war, why the hell would we not want that back?" I asked. "It was your home. It can be the place that protects the twins. We're running out of room here, and it's really not safe."

"She is right," Elijah spoke up for the first time since I had even started talking about all this stuff with the Abattoir. "Niklaus is right. We need the Abattoir."

"How badly can we need a damned building?" Kol demanded. "If they get an Elder, Darcy, that means they need one more thing to complete this Harvest: _you_!"

I closed my eyes, to try and focus on nothing more than breathing. Of course I had thought about this part of that. The witches of New Orleans needed an Elder and their Harvest magic to complete the Harvest. If I gave them one, they were one step away.

To complete their Harvest, I had to die, and aside from the fear of dying, there were people I cared about tied to my life, people I refused to let go down because of their insane ties to Ancestral magic.

Why was it so important that they stayed connected to their ancestors?

"I know," I whispered.

His stare remained soft, despite the tightening of his jaw. "Two days ago, you were determined to get the hell out of this town and let their magic disappear because you were afraid they had found a way to kill you."

"I still am, but if they have a way to kill me, hiding here won't protect me," I said. "It won't protect the twins. It won't protect anyone! They've already proven that they will stop at nothing to complete this Harvest and keep their magic. I'm trying to come to terms with something I never wanted to say out-loud, but I will. Survival sometimes does require people to die, and it won't be us."

I watched the tension ripple across his features, watched his eyes fall to his fists that clenched and then unclenched over and over again, and all he did was take a breath in. It was slow and heavy, to try and focus maybe, but he stood to his feet and stepped closer to me, close enough that he could reach over and wrap his arms around me.

His grip was tight, and he leaned his face against the top of my head. "You're right. We will take back the Abattoir and do what we can, but even if the werewolves decide to side with us, we're still outnumbered. There are nine covens of witches. We have you."

I nodded. "I know."

"We have small numbers of vampires still alive," he continued. "We have ourselves."

"This doesn't have to last forever. We just have to have enough to survive until January."

"And then what?" Thierry asked, and admittedly, I had almost forgotten that he could talk at all. He hadn't said much of anything all day, at least while I was around. "You just leave the rest of us behind to fend for ourselves in the bloodbath in your wake? Even if the witches lose power, this isn't over."

In all the hasty decisions I had made, in defense of my children and my family, it hadn't even occurred to me what happened after. We talked about leaving as soon as the border around New Orleans was gone, but it hadn't actually occurred to me what leaving would do.

The plan was to give the werewolves access to their powers at any time, which left the vampires completely and utterly vulnerable. Marcel wanted his city back, but I was setting the werewolves up to rule the city, without anyone who could oppose them.

There had to be balance and compromise. We couldn't just leave everyone behind to die. I didn't doubt one bit that the werewolves would kill every vampire they came across unless some sort of peace was established.

"If it hasn't been made clear enough for you, my only goal is to protect the woman I love and my children," Kol spoke up when he noticed my thoughts drifting, and he let go of me now, to face Thierry. "The rest does not matter. The moment we are able to leave town, we will."

My lips trembled. "We can't do that."

"Yes we can." He looked back to me now, a line forming between his brows. "Do you remember what you told me last night? You said that above all else, we would stop at nothing to give them the future they deserved."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean the world has to burn around us!"

"I don't care about the world!" he exclaimed. "Damn it, I could care less about the world, about this city! It can all burn!"

"That's why we have these problems!" I insisted. "Don't you get it? Every enemy we have will come for them to get to us! We can't keep making more enemies! There has to be somewhere safe. There have to be people outside of our family that we can rely on, or this will never end!"

The corners of his eyes tightened. "Why don't you just say it?"

"Say what?" I scoffed. "Do you think I didn't know what I was getting myself into when I decided to have the twins? Why do you think I left? It wasn't because I wanted to go because that was actually the last thing in the world I wanted, especially with all that happened that night. It was so no one would know. I didn't want anyone to know whose they were, and that was stupid of me to believe that it was possible. I know what the name Mikaelson means, Kol. I knew what it meant when I decided to have your children, and I knew what it meant when I agreed to marry you."

He was silent, and I knew why. I was talking about all the things he hated thinking about. Our twins were doomed from the start because of their name. Even beyond _what_ they were, who they were made them targets, and what they were just meant more people were determined to see them dead.

"It doesn't matter whose are whose," I said, after ensuring he had nothing to say yet. "I've made my own enemies! I know that I have, and I'm facing that! You've made yours. Klaus has made his, Elijah, Rebekah—it doesn't fucking matter whose enemies they are! That's part of being a family, right? Shared friends and enemies, or does that word only count when it's convenient for you?"

The glare that formed wasn't something I could ever really get used to, at least not directed at me. It felt like a small piece of my soul died to see his anger on me, _at_ me. There was nothing soft and warm right now, just his anger at me, at the world, and at the situation.

"You know that's not true."

He was right about that. Kol had never given me reason to say that, and maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe it wasn't called for, but I had said it. I couldn't take it back, but I knew where he stood. He knew what I felt, and it was out there.

"The point is, our enemies will come for our kids," I said, but there was a drastic change in the volume of my words. I didn't wanna yell, especially not at him. "The more we make, the bigger the army against us grows. At what point do we stop doing that?"

It was like watching a cloud roll across the brown depths of his eyes, wiping away the anger and bringing the soft comfort I once knew. The anger lingered in every stiff muscle across his body, but his eyes, which were the windows to his soul, were like warm brown clouds.

"When are you going to realize that you can't fix everything?"

"When are you going to realize that I will try my hardest to fix everything?" I asked as the only answer I could think of to his question. "Aside from endangering the people I care about most, I will stop at nothing."

He hesitated, for just a few moments, and he slowly shook his head. "You're obviously not going to listen to reason right now."

"No. I'm pretty sure you're the one not listening," I disagreed. "They're gonna help us get to January. The least we can do is help them at least reach a point of peace. There are factions here, right?"

"Yes." Marcel cleared his throat the second he spoke up, and it had been a long time since I had seen Kol stare as darkly at someone as he was Marcel, in that moment. "The humans, the witches, and the vampires."

I turned to fully face him. "And the werewolves?"

"They were banned from the city," he reminded me. "I'd like to keep it that way."

"Peace requires compromise," I said. "The werewolves won't just tuck tail and run when this is over. If you didn't see that today, we weren't standing in the same bar."

"It's the only way to ensure our safety," he said, and he shifted his weight, to make himself seem bigger maybe.

"No. I can give you a million ways, but that's not what we're discussing right now." I spun back around to Kol, who had further softened the more my words seemed to echo in his head. "Right now, priority is getting somewhere safe, somewhere we can withstand anything the witches try and do. The Abattoir is the best way to do that. We could go in, kill every last person in there, or we can offer something they want more. Now, you guys have been alive for a thousand years. Surely you know extremely powerful witches."

"Powerful witches, sure, but that doesn't mean we have the slightest clue where their remains are," Rebekah said, but her stare was tight and focused on her brother.

"Wait." I began gnawing on my bottom lip a bit, my mind wandering off to any powerful witches _I_ knew. "What did we do with Joshua's remains?"

Shea shook her head from the couch she and Sutton shared across the room. With the twins down for bed, no one had to be guarding them so closely, so the room was _very_ crowded with people, trying to just understand what our next move was.

Shea was one of them, and she had mostly just listened until now. "We have no idea what that might do. You're Gemini. He was Gemini. With his connection to every Gemini, it could connect you to the Ancestors."

"Would it, though?" I asked. "We severed that connection when we killed him."

She quirked her lips to the side, but her eyes were distant. "You're probably right. I can have Prisca and Maisyn bring his coffin. Because removing your dead uncle from the soil is the best way to get into the holiday spirit."

The holidays . . . we were in the middle of the holiday season. We left town just after Thanksgiving, to ensure no one suspected anything. I didn't want my family brought into whatever mess waited in New Orleans.

It was December now, though. We were getting closer and closer to Christmas, and I was getting closer and closer to breaking the promise I made the twins last year, on Christmas morning.

It was supposed to be normal. They were supposed to have a normal, happy Christmas.

My eyes burned with the warning of tears, and I turned them down, towards my feet. "Yeah. Call her and see if she can do that."

Kol didn't have to see my face to know what was going on in my head, and he engulfed me in another snug embrace. All I could do was bury my face against him, enjoy the chocolate mint aroma, and remind myself that in the end, we would see them through to their eighteenth birthdays.

He pulled me even closer. "They will have their Christmas, love."

"Right," I snorted. "Because we can go down to the store right now and get them some Christmas presents."

"You know that's not what you care about."

"No, it's not." I managed to reach up and rub the tears from my eyes, before they could actually fall. "Do you wanna know what we were doing on their first Christmas? We were riding in a car for seven hours. I told myself that this year would different, and I told myself that they would have a normal life. That's not possible, though, and I guess I never really thought about that part."

He noticed when tears actually fell down my cheeks, and he just resumed the tight embrace I didn't think I could wiggle out of if I tried. "Their lives were meant to be extraordinary."

"I had their party all planned out," I reminded him. "Theia was gonna have a Minnie smash cake, and Alastor's would be Donald. He was gonna get icing on his fingers and wipe it on Theia because he doesn't like stuff on his hands, and the stupid Hot Dog Song was gonna be playing on constant loop to the point we all wanted to kill ourselves. But they would be happy."

Maybe he was right, though. Maybe my desire to help people was the cause of all of this. Had we not come to town to rescue Marcel in the first place, none of this would've happened. They would've had their party, and they would've had the Christmas I wanted for them.

If we hadn't come, Marcel would've died. The witches would've killed him for all he had put them through, all the witches he had killed, and whether he deserved that or not didn't matter. One day, we'd pull the dagger from Klaus, and we'd have to tell him that we left Marcel to die. We would have to face that choice for all of eternity.

That's all life was, a random collaboration of choices and moments.

Maybe he was wrong to say that my desire to help people was out of place, but he was right to say that their lives were meant to be extraordinary. Maybe they didn't have to have normal lives like I wanted. If they could learn to help people, to try and make the world a better place, what did it matter if they had a stupid Mickey Mouse birthday party?

I didn't expect to see tears threatening to fall from Kol's eyes when I pulled back, only because of all the people around, but I sometimes underestimated just how much I got to him. "But none of that matters, does it?"

His brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"One day, they may ask me why there are no pictures from their first Christmas, or from their first birthday," I said. "Or maybe their sixth. I don't know. I guess one day we'll have to explain to them that the world is a shitty place, and things had to happen that we didn't like. We had to give up those stupid traditions in favor of trying to make it not so shitty, and I hope they understand. I want them to understand."

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and one hand reached up to tuck some hair behind my ears. "You want them to be like you."

"I want them to be whoever they want to be," I said. "But I at least want them to understand what I was trying to do."

The smile didn't hide anymore, came out full force, and both arms unwrapped from around me so his hands could cradle my face. "As long as you are there to show them how to be a good person, they will understand."

I swallowed under the intensity of his stare, of his _love_."We have to do this."

He took a deep breath. "I know."

"So is that it?" Rebekah asked. "We're going to have Caroline bring the vessel, while Prisca and Maisyn bring the dead Gemini leader?"

I nodded and glanced to my sister, almost officially but through pretty much every other definition of the word. She was my future husband's sister, and she was one of my best friends. She was everything a sister was supposed to be.

"That's all we can do," I said. "We can start looking for black kyanite stones because I get the feeling that we're gonna need them."

She smiled now, and I loved seeing her blue eyes sparkle any time she did. "That's because you're annoyingly optimistic."

"It would be appropriate to have them on hand, at the very least," Elijah spoke up. "Tomorrow, someone should go into town and speak with a jeweler. We will need a lot of these rings, and magic doesn't create jewelry. We need to get connections in the city."

I turned to Marcel again, who was more relaxed than when I had last looked at him—maybe because we had agreed to not leave them to die. "You said there's a human faction. Who's in charge of that?"

"Father Kieran," he said. "He's the one who asked me to interrupt the Harvest ritual to begin with. He would be more than willing to at least hear us out, or maybe just you. You're a bit nicer than the rest of us."

"If he wanted to stop the Harvest, that means he's not fond of the idea of young children dying," I pointed out. "Pretty sure any mention of the witches holding my children hostage until they got their magic back would be enough to persuade him."

"You're probably right about that."

I would talk to him. I _had_ to talk to him, to at least see if the humans would at least not help the witches. I didn't necessarily want them to get involved, but I wanted them to stay uninvolved on both sides. The witches didn't need any more support to supplement the beams I was already kicking down.

The best way to start looking for a way to find peace in New Orleans was to get connections within every faction.

* * *

 **A/N: I hope you guys are continuing to enjoy! I'm sorry that I'm not updating very much. I started making progress in progressing the story, but then I just got stuck out of nowhere. I still have the outline done into the next part, but I'm just stuck on continuing on the chapter. I could force it, but it might not be good, and I wanna do this story proper justice. It's got a special place in my heart.**

 **Read, review, and enjoy!**


	13. 12: In Charge

"Don't you try to run right now, 'cause baby I could burn you down.  
You make your way into my veins,  
Course right through my limbs, and dig your way into my brain.  
So in the second that you walk, walk into a room,  
I can't help myself from the things that you do.  
Oh, you're killing me right now.  
I think it's time you burn me down.  
Oh, I love the things we do when it's just me and you."

 _Smoke_ : PVRIS

* * *

I had called it a night fairly early, at least early in comparison to how late I had stayed up since Davina showed up at our doorstep. It was still sometime close to midnight, but I was an Original tribrid. I needed sleep, but not as much as most.

Before calling it a night, however, I spent some time talking to Rebekah and Shea. They both declared that I was in desperate need of some time to myself, and it didn't matter how many times I tried to remind them that we were in the middle of the war.

Rebekah just didn't accept that excuse. "No, darling. War hasn't begun. If we have to fight our way into the Abattoir, _then_ war will begin."

Shea nodded. "You know what we need to do? We need to go look at wedding dresses."

I laughed. "There's no way in hell we can do that. Besides, we're missing a lot of people. I'm fairly certain Prisca would _kill_ you."

"I don't mean to actually _find_ one," she insisted. "I just need to get some ideas because I'm me, and I don't do the 'dress' thing very often. So maybe we can both come with you when you go to talk to this Father Kieran? Doing a bit of looking never hurt anyone."

Eventually, with them both insisting that it was what I needed, I relented, but only on the condition that no one say a word about it. I already cried in front of everyone over something sentimental and maybe even a weakness. I didn't want anyone thinking that I was a love struck idiot looking at wedding dresses in the middle of all of the chaos.

"If anyone has a problem with it, they can take it up with me," Rebekah declared, though she agreed to keep it to herself. "There is absolutely nothing wrong with being human."

"Except that's exactly how you guys have survived all these years, by being different?"

"And maybe we were wrong," she said. "Maybe you're right. The way we've lived our lives has amassed an army of enemies against us. Maybe if we did things the way you do, things might be different."

I didn't know if I would still be myself centuries down the road, but I wanted to try and help. I wanted to still be myself because I had an endless lifetime to make the world a better place. As soon as all of this was over with the twins, I was gonna do that, one way or another.

The night had been an emotional roller coaster, so I called it a night somewhat early. I blamed Kol for most of the turmoil because he had said some hurtful things. I had said hurtful things back, and it was hard to have these kinds of fights because we didn't really fight much.

When we did, however, hurtful things were usually said. Our fighting inexperience showed, but we never took it too far. Even tonight, nothing he said was too far. It just hurt to hear it said.

That was okay, though, because we would deal with it the same way we always did. Some people argued that the way we dealt with these feelings of hurt was wrong, but we didn't just fuck and ignore them. We fucked and faced them, just like the night before when it made me face the pain of killing Agnes.

Fucking connected us to one another, to our humanity, and it brought us to a place of peace, where we _could_ talk about things without just hurting one another more.

Kol was probably expecting to find me waiting naked for him, but I wasn't quite naked. I wasn't too far from it, but I was feeling a bit adventurous.

There was something I wanted to try, something I had mentioned a few times and even unsuccessfully tried some. I was becoming rather bossy, and in a lot of ways, I had put myself in charge of everything we did.

Any time I tried taking charge of Kol, in bed, I had never used enough force. He always ended up taking charge again.

This time would be different. He hurt my feelings, and I was gonna make him pay for that as sexually as I could without seriously hurting him.

There were footsteps in the hallway, and I knew it wasn't necessarily Kol. On the chance that it _was_ , I ran into the bathroom to check myself in the mirror one last time.

The darker makeup around my eyes, the blood red on my lips, it went perfectly with my teased roots and the lace and leather lace-up corset I had picked out, with cap sleeves and lace around the waist that cascaded down, about halfway down my ass. Paired with the thong and cage garter belt, I had never seen myself look quite this way.

There was something about this side of myself that I liked. I didn't want to become this dark and murderous person, but to see my reflection and realize how foreign it still was gave me some comfort.

Everything was just how I wanted it to be, so I used my speed to get me into the bedroom. With a bundle of sage and a lighter in hand, I nestled into the nook in the far corner of the room and simply waited.

It was Kol in the hallway, and he came into the room quickly. He wasn't looking at me, hadn't even noticed me in the corner. He simply stepped into the room and closed the door, leaning his face into it to catch his breath.

"This will be over soon, one way or another."

He didn't see me, but he knew I was in here. I didn't say anything, simply pressed the button on the end of the lighter, rolling my thumb across the wheel to spark it. If that sound wasn't enough, I whispered the privacy spell under my breath. Even if he couldn't make out the exact words, Kol knew what was happening.

His muscles relaxed before he even turned. "Oh, I do love you."

I stood from the nook and continued being quiet, and I stepped over closer to the bed, to place the sage on the table beside it. He could hear the red heels I wore moving against the floor, and he let out the softest moan.

Kol knew me. If I had put on heels, that meant I had put something else on too.

The softest moan left his lips at the sound of the heels, but that was before he even saw them. Something about red heels got to him, in ways I couldn't understand, so that was what I wore, to go with everything else.

He slowly turned to face me, and I watched the breath catch in his throat the second he laid eyes on me. "Fuck."

I watched him run forward, faster than most would've been able to see, but I simply stuck a hand out in front of me, keeping him arm's length away from me.

This was the hard part, making myself in charge. I could do it with a smile, or with a bit of sassy flare, but this was a dominance that I had only talked about doing. This was something that required me to be in character, to talk to him like he was beneath me.

Okay, maybe that was a bit much. I really didn't wanna get into _that_ kind of dominance. We were partners, and I loved him, more than I loved myself.

There was balance, though.

"Sit down," I commanded, without a hint of hesitation catching the words.

His lips curled into a huge grin, lit up by the fire that burned in his eyes. "Oh, is that how we're doing this?"

I stared up at him now, hardening my expression and pressing my lips. "Sit. Down."

His eyebrows rose up on his head, but there was raw delight and excitement, the thrill of something sort of new. "I'm going to like this."

"Stop talking."

Kol never made this kind of thing easy, but with that one final command, he sat down on the edge of the bed closest to me. His eyes remained on me, his smirk setting across his lips.

I stepped closer, close enough that he could touch me, but I pushed his hands down. "Take your shirt off."

His mouth hung open a bit, and maybe it was because of how determined I was to do this. Most times, by now, I was already giggling and deciding that I was over being in charge.

Not tonight. He hurt my feelings.

I didn't take the time to appreciate the muscles of his toned chest, not like I usually did, but I leaned back enough to see them now. Along his sides, across his abdomen, everything just rippled with the movement of his shirt sliding up, and it was beyond delicious to see.

With it thrown to the side, I climbed onto his lap and put my knees around his hips. Kol was _never_ going to protest that, especially when I was naked or as close to naked as I currently was.

I ran my fingers down his chest, appreciating both the ridges and the warmth beneath my skin. " _Mine_."

Like a surprisingly good boy, he simply nodded, but instead of staring at the lingerie barely covering my body, his eyes moved up to my face, focusing on the details there—my red lips in particular.

"Tell me what you want me to do to you," I whispered.

There was a flicker of devious light across his eyes, only accented by the smirk that grew. "You told me to stop talking."

"Don't be a smartass."

His teeth scraped across his bottom lip now, and he leaned himself back away from me, to get a better view of _everything_. "I'm rather interested to see what you do if I am."

"You're making this harder on yourself," I warned.

"I'm up for a challenge," he said.

I had prepared for this kind of response from Kol, much sooner than it actually came, so I had come up with all kinds of different ways to punish him. Some were worse than others, but sinking my teeth into his throat . . . that was both pleasure and punishment.

I didn't drink too much of the blood from his veins, as I didn't want him getting drained so soon, but it was enough to have him holding my hips against his, the grip tightening beyond what he was usually willing to hold me.

I pulled away and let him see me lick the blood from my lips, and his gaze was smoldering. "Ooh. Does that hurt?"

His jaw clenched, but there wasn't any part of him that was angry right now. As I had instructed, he remained silent, so to reward him, I reached over to the bedside table, to grab the small vial of my blood I had gotten when I first decided to do this, and poured it into his mouth.

He could feel the bite healing on his neck, and he let out a slow breath. "Take whatever you want from me."

"Tell me what you want me to do to you," I said again.

His hands slipped up my back, forcing my body to arch into his, and his lips dropped to my ear, the warm breath making my mind swirl before words even came out. "I want you to rip the clothes from my body. I want you to wrap that pretty mouth of yours around my cock and gag on it."

"No."

"What?" He pulled back and glared at me. "You said—"

I put my finger on his lips. "Shh. Just keep going."

It was hard to ignore the warmth that surged between my legs, that swirled through the blood in my veins. Every part of me was alive in the ways that only Kol could bring me, and I loved every moment of this, even if it was a struggle to remember that I had to be the boss right now.

"I want you to show me how wet you are as you guide me into you, and then—"

That was more than enough for me, and maybe it was bad from the "dominating" point of view. Hearing the words leave his mouth always got to me, and I couldn't keep myself back.

Pinning him back against the bed, I had never removed his pants and underwear as fast as I did then. Wrapping my red lips around him, sliding as far down as my mouth could physically hold, his fingers reached down to grab onto my hair, to tug with ecstasy.

I didn't keep my lips wrapped around him long, just slid up and down a little bit with enough friction to get him lost in his own pleasure. With him lost, I had a chance to move up his body, to wrap my legs around his hips and grip him between me.

I leaned closer to him, catching his attention in a moment. "There's something you need to know before we get started."

"What's that?" he breathed, but he barely got the words out with his mind spinning. I could see the disorientation in his eyes, past the fire of his lust for me.

"If I don't come three times, you're not allowed to."

That broke through it all, and his eyes widened. He tried to sit up, but I just pushed him back down, a huge smirk growing on my lips. "What?"

I rubbed my lips together. "I warned you. You just couldn't stop talking."

With him lost in the surprise, I wrapped my fingers around his throat, and he ignited beneath my touch. I didn't want to squeeze and actually choke him, but with my hand around his throat, I used it to push myself up a bit, far enough that I could slip him between my legs, simply moving the panties aside.

He grunted, but he wasn't so submissive just yet. Getting a piece of what he wanted, he reached up to grab my body, to rip me back down to him. I let him do it, only because I knew what it was he wanted to do.

Kol _loved_ me being on top, and sometimes, he would just revel in the sight of me moving on top of him. If he had me close to him, there was something he wanted to do, for both of our pleasure.

His teeth sank into my throat, but he didn't get to drink more than a second. He started choking on the blood, the slightest hint of vervain burning the insides of his mouth and down his throat.

"Fuck! You're the worst."

"Mmm." I let go of his throat, but that was only so I could scratch my way down the side of it, drawing a trail of blood the entire length of it. "I want you to remember that."

"Never."

I wanted to smile, but this was _not_ the time for sweet. This was the time for hot and spicy, for me to push us both to limits we've never gone. He was the only person in the world I think I ever would've been comfortable enough with to try this, and I was going to see this through, at least _once_ in our endless lifetimes.

"Are you ready to start pleasuring me?" I asked, and it was so hard not to put a cute smile on at the end of it. I had to remind myself that this was not time for love and affection. This was the time to dominate him in a way he would never forget.

Fuck, I didn't get how people did this all the time. I couldn't manage that.

His breath caught, a dark smile twisting out. "I would always like to start doing that."

I didn't get a chance to react because he suddenly ripped me off of him, pulling my hips towards his face, and holy _fuck_. I had to remind myself the entire time that I was in charge because he definitely made it hard to remember that.

Grabbing onto the headboard in front of me, I started slowly moving my hips, and his tongue simply worked its magic against me, factoring in each movement to bring me the utmost pleasure.

I struggled to hold back moans, but I managed and just held on for dear life. This was one of the greatest feelings in the world, any kind of intimate moments with Kol, and I was just glad I had forever to truly enjoy it all.

I remembered that he needed commands, that I wasn't supposed to just sit here and love every second of this, so I reached down and put my hands on his, which were gripping my thighs. "You get one this way."

He surprised me when he let go of my thighs and reached up, tugging down the panties that were on my body and discarding them with ease. His hands moved around to grab onto my ass, and he just got right back into it, as if he hadn't even stopped.

It didn't take much longer, as Kol was an expert with his tongue. The things that man could do to me weren't healthy or right, but _fuck_ , I loved every moment of it.

He knew when it was happening. He could always taste it, and he was a fan of the way I tasted. Like usual, he went so far as to lick every part of me up, and all I could do was remind myself what I said.

 _He only gets one this way._

I let him finish licking me clean, and I lifted my hips off his face. Sliding down his chest, rubbing myself against the skin and leaving a wet trail, I had never been so turned on by being so _dirty_.

Sex was messy. I had figured that out a long time ago, but most times, I didn't go out of my way to make it as messy as possible. This wasn't really going out of my way, but I had never enjoyed seeing the mess like I did then.

I didn't care if we would have to shower after this, and from the way Kol's mouth hung open a bit, watching me slide down his chest, I knew he really didn't care either.

While he was distracted, I used magic to cuff his wrists to the bed, and climbing on was easy after that. I wasn't gonna do all the work myself, as that wasn't very dominant of me.

Or was it? I really had no idea how to do this and was just winging it all, but it was so hot, I didn't imagine this would be the last time I ever did this.

From the way Kol watched me, his teeth barred, I imagined he was enjoying this as much if not more than I was.

I didn't bring myself to an orgasm this way, only enjoyed the pleasure of having Kol inside of me for a minute or so. I was also kind of being a dick, making it harder for him to hold out, and he actually groaned when I climbed back off of him.

I moved over to the edge of the bed and glanced over my shoulder at him, giving him a smirk that made his eyes ignite even further somehow. With a curl of my fingers and a spell done in my head, his restraints were removed from his wrists, and I just smiled.

"Come here."

He didn't hesitate to do just that, moving to grab onto my hips.

I leaned against the footboard, grabbing on and arching my back with a smirk on my lips as I glanced at him. "Take me."

"With pleasure," he all but growled, and holy fuck. The reminder that Kol was capable of being the absolute hottest thing the world had to offer, both in the way he looked and the way he sounded, had me moaning, but I didn't try and take it back.

This man could make me moan, and he deserved to know that.

He didn't hesitate to grab onto my hips and push himself right in, and things got a bit crazy from there. Kol had spent plenty of time appreciating it when I wasn't breakable anymore, but that didn't mean he was ever going to stop. He could still make love to me as if I was breakable, or he could fuck me like the indestructible tribrid I was.

Both were great options to me.

I could feel my orgasm coming quickly, with the speed and force he was pounding into me. Some didn't like it rough like this, but _fuck_ , I did.

I squeaked when my orgasm hit, followed by letting a moan roll off my tongue, and Kol felt it. He continued moving, slowing down his pace, and he held onto my hips.

He leaned over me, pressing himself deeper into me, and his mouth got next to my ear. "Would you like the next one hard or sensual?"

I was breathing heavily, trying to focus my thoughts enough to answer his question, but it wasn't working so well, not with him still moving into me.

I did something else instead. I simply scrambled out of his grip and stood to my feet, giving him a smirk that ignited his passions all over again. He reached out to try and grab onto me, but I stepped out of reach.

That didn't stop him from climbing off the bed to grab onto me, but that was what I wanted him to do. With a smirk, I brought him to his knees as painlessly as I could, though it probably stung a _little_. Still, I didn't wanna hurt him more than slight twinges of pain.

With him on his knees, it was easy to use magic to lock his hands by his side, and he felt it. Watching him ignite, watching his breath stall in his chest, I had never felt more dominant than I did in that moment.

I couldn't even let myself think about what he might do after I was done. All I could think about was finishing strong and giving him something to remember for many years to come.

I lifted my foot and pressed my heel into his shoulder, and his eyes couldn't decide if they wanted to observe my face or the dripping mess between my legs. "You think it'll be that easy for you?"

He scoffed, but his eyes were shining up at me again. "This is not easy."

"Well, that's the point," I said.

"If you ever wear red heels again—"

"Excuse me, but I will wear whatever I want and do whatever I want." I slowly squatted down closer to his level, keeping my body just barely away from him so he could feel my warmth but not my soft skin. "And you're gonna like it."

"Oh, I don't doubt that one bit," he murmured, and his eyes were burning through me, a smirk starting to form on those yummy lips of his.

I smirked. "Now, don't look at me."

"What?"

"Don't look at me," I said again.

"I have already explained to you that you are all I have seen since I first laid eyes on you," he reminded me, and the tenderness in his voice was so off with the current moment we were in.

I had to press my lips and remind myself not to let him in—he knew exactly what he was doing, and the smirk in his eyes only confirmed what I already knew. I knew him well enough to know what he was doing, and he couldn't hide his smirk even if he wanted to.

"Don't look at me," I repeated, and it was supposed to be for the last time. I didn't know if it would be, as Kol was _not_ the type to make anything easy, but I could only hope.

There was only so much I could do if he wasn't submitting. I really didn't want to _hurt_ him.

His eyes moved away from me, moving to the other side of the room, and I was genuinely surprised. The surprise only lasted for a few moments because his eyes suddenly darted back to me, softening and igniting all over again.

How could someone be so damn adorable and hot at the same time? It wasn't fair.

I stood up and stepped past him, and I locked him in place so he couldn't turn. I loved the way his breath stalled again, and I wondered if there was a smile on his lips as I crossed the room, going to grab the spray bottle I had hidden just beneath the bed.

I had prepared for this moment since I decided to call it a night early, and I had done everything I could think of, ranging from taking just a small amount of vervain so it was in my system to getting a spray bottle filled with vervain water and a tie to blindfold him with.

I didn't need anything else because I had magic.

I grabbed the spray bottle and tie from beneath the bed, and I came to stand behind him. Watching him breathe was fun, but I could feel myself pulsing in need for him again.

I had never thought I'd be the woman who desperately needed another man and his dick as much as I did Kol and his, but I honestly didn't think I could go without it anymore, not after becoming a vampire. It was bad enough as a human, but there was no way I could go any kind of extensive period of time without it anymore.

I had a problem, but it was okay. At least it was a hot problem.

Squeezing onto the bottle out of nowhere, his body tensed against the restraints, and I got a perfect view of the way his back muscles moved. Back muscles were under appreciated, but seriously, they were so fucking hot.

"You have vervain," he breathed.

"Well, you're not exactly the submissive type," I pointed out. "Gotta beat you down somehow."

He groaned and let his head roll back, but I was moving around to stand in front of him. "Fuck."

His eyes were following me as I moved around, and I didn't hesitate to spray him again. A smirk resided on his lips, and though he flinched as the water burned his skin, he didn't stop.

Stupid adorable fucker.

"Fine," I said. "You leave me no choice."

I pulled the tie up and wrapped it around his eyes, and I couldn't get enough of the way his breath caught. The things _I_ did left him breathless, left him longing for more. After a thousand years on this earth, _I_ was what he wanted more than anything.

It was a far stretch from the funny looking doppelgänger.

I started kissing down his chest, moving as low as I could. Yoga had done me a lot of good, so I was able to bend in ways he would've lost his mind if he saw. Sometimes, he would ask me to do it just so he could watch me, and I was all about giving him a proper show.

Right now, it was just coming in handy as I kissed along his skin, along the sides his arms and down the sides of his ribs. My hands reached back to grab onto his ass, making him moan a bit with the intimate touches I was giving him.

Scratching my nails across his skin was another thing that he really enjoyed, so I kept that and the kisses going. He didn't really stop tugging against the restraints, and his breathes were loaded and heavy.

I dropped lower and rubbed my tongue across his dick, not caring about the taste that lingered. Right now, all I cared about was bringing him the most pleasure I could while still somehow maintaining complete control of the situation.

If wanting to bring him pleasure made me a bad dominant, I was a bad dominant, and I could definitely live with that.

I was practically laying on my stomach as I ducked down and started sucking on his balls, and Kol just groaned, pulling against the restraints once again. I decided, just to see what happened, to release his body from the restraints.

He felt it the moment it happened, and I was suddenly pressed into the floor, getting a view of Kol as he ripped the blindfold off and leaned over me. His dick slipped right in, and the way he moved into me had my toes curling in an instant.

He had fucked me without mercy before, but this was somehow more intense than that. This was as if the world was going to explode if we didn't fuck, if we didn't both reach an orgasm in the next minute. I had never been so in love with the feeling of being fucked without mercy as I was then, and it didn't take much time at all to bring me over the edge.

Kol felt it, felt me pulsing around him as a moan ripped through me, and he lost it almost immediately after I did. He collapsed onto me, holding my body into his, and I couldn't breathe, couldn't really even see straight.

Holy fuck. That was hot.

His chest shook, his body trembling, but his arms wrapped around me, crushing me into him. "When I catch my breath, Darcy Gilbert, I am going to do so many bad things to you."

I smiled widely and let my head roll back, loving the way his own smile widened against my skin. "So was that fun?"

His eyes were wide and a bit wild when they moved up to me. "I think you are the only person in the world who can be completely smoldering one moment and utterly adorable the next."

"I'm not the only person," I disagreed. "But you didn't answer my question."

"Fucking yes it was!" he exclaimed, and he let out a moan before shaking his head. "I don't think I'll be able to do that all the time, however. You are quite demanding and bossy."

"Don't worry," I said, letting out a breath. I guess a part of me _had_ feared he might want that all the time, and I just couldn't get into that kind of thing _all_ the time, not even most of the time probably. "Me either. I just . . . wanted to try it, see if you liked it."

"I didn't just like it," he said. "I assure you. I will beg you to do that again sometime if I must."

"Mmm. Will be on your knees?"

He laughed, and his eyes shimmered down at me, a bit of the lust from the moment fading as love was taking back over. "If you tell me to, I will get on my knees. As long as you wear those red heels."

"Deal."

I loved the feeling of being lifted off the floor, of Kol moving to take off the corset I was wearing as his lips softly pressed against mine. Dropping the corset to the floor, he held me and changed the entire mood in less than five seconds, but it was a mood I was _much_ more comfortable with, one that I would never get tired of.

He dropped me back onto the bed, kissing along my now naked body as his hands softly moved to appreciate each part of my skin. It had my head rolling back, giving him better access to my neck, but I noticed the sage sitting on the bedside table.

It wasn't just sitting there burning, like it was supposed to be. In fact, it wasn't burning at all.

I sat up quickly, pushing Kol up with me as I did. I turned away and reached over to pick up the sage, and I couldn't breathe anymore as I stared at it. "Doesn't this have to continue burning for it to work?"

His eyes grew wide. "Um, yes."

"When did it stop burning?" I asked.

"I couldn't tell you," he said. "I was a bit busy."

That was the last thing I needed to hear, but _fuck_ , I could feel an uncomfortable warmth surging through me, residing mostly in my cheeks as my stomach felt as if it was lined with osmium, dropping to the ends of my toes.

I was under the covers in the blink of an eye, pulling them over my head and holding on tight enough that Kol had to actually work hard to try and pry them from my hands.

"I am _never_ coming out again!"

How could I? We had _no idea_ what anyone had heard, if the sage had even worked at all!

In a house full of vampires, that was _just_ what needed to happen.

* * *

 **A/N: Sorry it's been so long! One of the reasons, though not the only reason, was due to my hesitance to post this chapter. Not because I didn't think it fit, but as far as I remember, I've never posted a chapter this detailed and steamy. I've posted M rated chapters before, obviously, but none quite like this one! I've written a lot worse, but I've never _shared_ them with anyone before.**

 **I hope it turned out well, though, and I hope you enjoy it. Read, review, and enjoy! :)**


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